The poetry of Gregory Pardlo is some of the finest, engaged work written in the U.S. today. He brings us the striking air traffic controller, permanently replaced, selling off everything but his house, his young son outside that house speaking to snowflakes. He conjures up the glory and the grace of girls jumping Double Dutch. And he tells of an impoverished old man who asks to hold the hand of a recovering alcoholic so that together they might toss a coin into a fountain and wish for something else. And Pardlo’s work helps us imagine what that something else might be.
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