A Brute in America: Poetry and an Interrogation of Violence

There were things at those tables, post-scuffle, that we wished we could say aloud but couldn’t—for shame, for fear, for lack of time. But there were many more things in the beautiful books I was reading that those poets and poems could not possibly have seen (refused to see?) in the barrooms, streets, and basements of New Jersey and New York. From those simultaneous silences, there’s a tremendous literature to be made.