Open Source

Selected from two decades of work, the poetry in Warren C. Longmire's OPEN SOURCE chronicles the complexities of language, identity, love and time. Ranging widely in style, with a lyric intensity rooted in the Philly landscape, this book reveals the interconnections between public and private history, a black man's daily struggle for self-acceptance and joy amidst "disastrous news and the grace/of each of arc of decay." Longmire addresses work in the tech industry as well as the gentrifying city as it grinds through a pandemic. At times raw, playful, painful and technical, OPEN SOURCE is poetry alert to the particulars and subtle shifts from day to day in uncertain times, unafraid to grapple with the past inside the present.