City Bird and Other Poems: City Lights Spotlight Series No 24

An underground denizen of San Francisco soars above it in a state-of-the-art long poem.

＂These poems about San Francisco challenge the media narrative of a city in decline, paying tribute to its joys. Dunagan weaves in allusions to artists, including Joan Brown and Jay DeFeo, poets Bill Berkson and Lew Welch, and local landmarks O’Farrell Street and St. Anne of the Sunset.＂--Publishers Weekly

Over a decade ago, Patrick James Dunagan stoically refused to be published in the Spotlight series, citing his desire to maintain critical independence as a prolific reviewer of contemporary poetry. Finally, he has been prevailed upon to turn over a manuscript, City Bird and Other Poems. Defying the media narrative of the city’s demise, the poems of City Bird celebrate the joys of San Francisco, invoking artists like Joan Brown and Jay DeFeo, poets like Bill Berkson and Lew Welch, and local landmarks like O’Farrell Street, St. Anne of the Sunset, and Thrasher magazine, all the while foregrounding Dunagan’s lightly worn erudition.

But the book stands on its lengthy title poem, a tour de force combining composition and collage, filtered through the poet’s laid-back lyricism. Unapologetically literary with its understated formal imperatives, City Bird is at once a self-referential poetics, examining itself unfolding, and a stream-of-consciousness narrative of Hugh, the nominal protagonist, seemingly engaged in eating a sandwich. Proustian in its sweep, even as it courts a ludicrous Beckett-like minimalism, the poem takes sidelong glances at our contemporary political malaise, while contemplating consciousness itself. If Ashbery had written ＂The Skaters＂ about skateboarders, it might have come out very like City Bird. A major achievement in contemporary American poetry, City Bird further confirms Dunagan’s reputation as the best-kept secret of San Francisco.

Patrick James Dunagan holds an MA/MFA in Poetics from the now defunct New College of California, where he studied with David Meltzer, Tom Clark, and Joanne Kyger. He’s author of many poetry collections, including Drops of Rain/Drops of Wine (Spuyten Duyvil, 2016), Sketch of the Artist (FMSBW, 2018), and After the Banished (Empty Bowl, 2022), as well as a book of criticism, The Duncan Era (Spuyten Duyvil, 2016). Additionally, he has served as editor for David Meltzer’s Rock Tao (Lithic, 2022), among other titles. He reviews regularly for Rain Taxi, and works as a library assistant at Gleeson Library for the University of San Francisco. He has lived in San Francisco for over 20 years.