Hilane-Levine Keating’s review of David Katz’s In Praise of Manhattan, titled Manahatta is featured in the American Book Review, and David Katz’s POETRY BLOG.
When his fourth book of poems, In Praise of Manhattan, appeared in early 2020, award-winning financial journalist and poet David M. Katz could hardly have imagined the radical transformation his beloved city would undergo a few weeks later due to a global pandemic. It is difficult to read this collection of thirty-four poems, all inflected with intimations of mortality, without remembering Manhattan’s mid-March transformation, its streets punctuated by screaming ambulance sirens. Yet these poems came before everything changed, and despite the thread of darkness woven throughout In Praise of Manhattan’s three sections, Katz’s poetry ultimately celebrates the beloved city he has walked his whole life and those who walked beside him.
