The Star-Spangled Banner by Michael Ruby
Reviewed by Bill Considine
forthcoming later this week
BILL CONSIDINE writes poems and plays. His books include The Furies and Strange Coherence (both from The Operating System) and The Other Myrtle (Finishing Line Press). His full-length plays performed in 2019 include Moral Support at Medicine Show Theatre and Women’s Mysteries at Polaris North. His verse plays seen in 2020 include Aunt Peg and the Comptometer at Bowery Poetry Club and Persephone’s Return and Odyssey’s End on Zoom from Polaris North. He is the printed matter editor and poets theater curator for Boog City, and a member of the Dramatists Guild, the theater arts cooperative Polaris North, and Brevitas, a poets’ cooperative. www.williamconsidine.com.
MICHAEL RUBY is the author of seven full-length poetry collections: At an Intersection (Alef), Window on the City (BlazeVOX, 2006), The Edge of the Underworld (BlazeVOX, 2010), Compulsive Words (BlazeVOX, 2010), American Songbook (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2013), The Mouth of the Bay (BlazeVOX, 2019) and The Star-Spangled Banner (Station Hill, 2020). His trilogy in prose and poetry, Memories, Dreams and Inner Voices (Station Hill, 2012), includes ebooks Fleeting Memories (Ugly Duckling, 2008) and Inner Voices Heard Before Sleep (Argotist Online, 2011). He is also the author of ebooks Close Your Eyes (Argotist, 2018) and Titles & First Lines (Mudlark, 2018), and five Dusie Kollektiv chapbooks. He co-edited Bernadette Mayer’s early books, Eating the Colors of a Lineup of Words (Station Hill, 2015), and Mayer’s and Lewis Warsh’s collaboration Piece of Cake (Station Hill, 2020). He lives in Brooklyn and works as an editor at The Wall Street Journal.