Transit Authority

The prize-winning poet and author of Partial Eclipse continues his investigation of urban metaphysical pathos in this collection. Transit Authority is made up of three sequences that mark the early and late junctures of the twentieth century: the first, a series of poems that investigate the early part of the century; the second, meditations based on the 1930s photographs by Berenice Abbott; and the third, "Reckoning," in which, with spare lyricism, Sanders meditates on where this century has brought us. Sanders looks with rueful intrigue at a landscape inundated with near misses and has-beens. While it is tempting to turn away from the common predicament, his poems quietly urge us to keep looking. As the poet concludes, though "things aren't what they should be according to the map . . . we have to press on in search of our bearings."