New York Nocturnes, and Other Poems

Sir Charles G.D. Roberts, celebrated as the Father of Canadian Poetry, turns his keen eye southward in this evocative collection, capturing New York City after dark with a poet's gift for finding humanity in urban landscape. The titular "Nocturnes" move through the city like a wanderer with nowhere urgent to go, rendering gaslit streets, cobblestones, and the particular loneliness of crowds with sensitive, muscular verse. These are poems that understand cities reveal their truest selves at night, when daylight's performances cease and something rawer emerges. The collection then branches into miscellaneous poems displaying Roberts' considerable range: nature lyrics that recall his deep Canadian roots, contemplative pieces on memory and transience, and occasional verses that reveal the Victorian gentleman's sensibility beneath the romantic's eye. For readers who believe poetry should make the familiar strange and the strange intimate, these nocturnes offer luminous company.