Souls and the City: Poems

Rita A. Simmonds’ poems offer a soulful account of life in New York, not the mythical, magical destination of tourists, but the grim, gritty city eight million people call home. SOULS IN THE CITY bears witness to the lived experience of real New Yorkers, from the young couple falling in love in Goldberg’s Pizzeria to the married couple having their Friday night fight against the backdrop of R&B on their car radio, from Jesus the Beggar sitting on the bare pavement to the Wise Woman searching the snowy streets for the sleeping Christ Child, from the visionary beauty of the Verrazano Bridge by night to the bald Battery bereft of its Twin Towers. Simmonds’ city pulsates with pain and with beauty, the two becoming one as the poet weaves from the tiny particulars of city life the universal story of suffering and redemption, consolation and desolation, despair and (always) hope. Simmonds’ poems constitute glancings of grace, intimate glimpses of shimmer and shine that redeem the ugliness of urban life. Following in the footsteps of her poetic forbears Walt Whitman, Hart Crane, and Allen Ginsberg, Rita Simmonds has discovered the soul of her city and blesses her readers with her vision. --Angela Alaimo O’Donnell, author of MOVING HOUSE, SAINT SINATRA, and WAKING MY MOTHER

With her utterly authentic imagery – concretely observed and lived and felt through-and-through – Rita Simmonds has rendered a city I was born into and have loved all my life intensely fresh. More, she has re-introduced me to its humanity and in important ways to my very self within it. Her distinctive gift is to show us that, if we will only pay enough attention, we will see St. Augustine’s City of God, not there and then but right here, right now. --James Como, Professor Emeritus, York College (CUNY), author, WHY I BELIEVE IN NARNIA