The sugar mile

the long version

In this book of poetry, Maxwell returns to the extended verse narrative he employed in Time's Fool, to juxtapose two cities on the brink of irrevocable change. The book begins when the poet steps into an uptown Manhattan bar a few days before September 11, 2001. He is confronted by a regular, a fellow British expatriate. It has been almost exactly sixty-one years since London's "Black Saturday," the start of the worst of the Blitz during World War II. Joe is a survivor of the bombing, and his insistent story brings his lost neighbors back to share the terror and the peculiar beauty blooming in the chaos of their last days. The bartender interrupts to brag about New York's wonders--as we begin to understand that the city soon will face its own catastrophic moment in history.--From publisher description.