Usher: Poems

From Manhattan to the rural Midwest―one of our most distinguished poets offers a verbal cinema of America.

Employing dramatic monologues, among other forms, Usher embraces a range of subject matter and modes, from the elegiac to the comic. At its heart, however, is the long poem “Trilogy,” consisting of three interrelated dramatic monologues spoken by a circus performer, a theological student and part-time usher, and Hart Crane.