Pub Crawl: A Poem of Philadelphia

This epic-length poem of 400 pages is Ernest Yates’s twelfth volume of poetry, and the ninth volume in an ongoing series based on his wanderings through Philadelphia streets.

Part Melville, part Joyce, part Bashō travel diary, part Barthesian semiotics―this account of a poet’s journey through the wilderness of post-industrial Philadelphia is much, much more: a search for freedom, God, love, community, home; a meditation on the city’s and nation’s history, and on the poet’s own life; a tentative definition of poetic form; and an argument concerning the relationship between poetry and life. Emerson and Stevens―but also Brooks, Ginsberg, Kerouac, and Lorde―would be smiling.