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The City: A New Yorker's New York is about the real New York; its taxi drivers, subway, dog walkers and icons like the Met, Central Park, and the Chrysler Building as told and photographed by a life-long resident turned author.
About the author
Born in Rockaway, Queens in 1934, Chester L. Kane moved to Manhattan with his family at a young age where he has lived and worked a majority of his life. New York City¿s energy and vitality has had an indelible influence on his poetry. His short and intense style, similar to Haiku, reflects a crowded and noisy Manhattan where the power of a single phrase, or word, is required to be heard. Upon retirement, he began to pen short, descriptive poems that reflected his experiences and interactions with his surroundings in New York City. ¿It was like releasing stored up images,¿ he says, not only from the years right after retirement, but back to his youth in New York City with its iconic places and people. ¿I¿m visual person and I had kept so many vivid images in my memory.¿
Summary
New Yorkers have a special perspective about their city; The City: A New Yorker’s New York is written for them.
This is the culmination of the author’s 80 years in New York; riding the trolleys and the El in the ‘40s; seeing Union Square in its socialist heyday and noting the changes that give us the city today - the dog walkers, the Jewish deli, the fire plug as well as the icons the Met, Central Park, the Chrysler building, and the neighborhoods, each with their personalities.
Each poem is an anecdote: the elevator as a caste system, the stroller as a ship of state with absolute right of way and every New Yorker knows that parking comes right after food, clothing and shelter.
Certainly the Covid virus has altered life, but the intrinsic city survives.
If you are a native New Yorker you’ll recognize The City in the way only you can.
