You will only be heard
When the noise
Has died down
And the air so clear
You can hear
The soundless
Soundtrack of bats,
The cutting edge
In a swaying blade of grass,
The memoirs of elephants,
The beat of a moth’s wing
In a distant whirlwind,
The snap of a lizard’s tongue,
And the gossip of
Ants in...
I recollect at last those first few weeks
on Beacon Street: broke newlyweds, we hid
our finite riches in a little room,
a basement studio whose cost seemed gruesome.
Fresh from Corpus Christi, you learned to speak
a northern language, talk of “quarters” wide-
mouthed like a Chowdahead’s wicked idiom.
That strangeness...
Townie is a book about fighting and writing. But it’s mostly about fighting: wanting to fight, learning to fight, training to fight, getting in fights. In the end, it’s about learning not to fight. (I’m not giving much away: a whole lot happens in the middle, and the final scene in which Dubus peels himself away from the urge to fight is lovely and...



