Publisher's Synopsis
"The poems in Imagine A Town reveal how a confederacy of places-a hometown, adopted city, a neighborhood-conspires to shape identity, especially when one's sense of self butts up against the values and expectations embraced by that place. These narratives convey how a girl's long view is foreshortened by smokestacks, slim resources, and the rough Alleghenies circling her blue-collar existence. Self-discovery also manifests through a reckoning of events outside the kitchen window, and in the wider world. Conversely, distance from the speaker's origins gently tightens the grasp of that place as she reconciles inevitable losses and regrets exacted by her departure. Memories of coming-of-age in a time of milkmen and trolley cars prompt a visitation to a hometown that's taken up residence in the poet's imagination as she journeys through place and time. Also infusing these poems is the tension of a constructed suburban world imposed on the n
