The late Anthony Bourdain always talked about getting “the good stuff,” meaning the realest, the most delicious, the slightly dangerous. Chicken Soup with the glisten of fat, bagels through the bakery grille at 5 am, still warm and breathing steam. Opening NYC From the Inside: NYC From the Poets Who Live Here is like getting all the good stuff—and more. The poets here are legendary—even their names: Ferlinghetti, Gaspar, Duhamel, Espada, Derricotte—my old friend Jennifer Blowdryer—but best of all are the poems they’ve shared—careening elegies, careful love songs, keening celebrations of all the New York’s past and present that fill our senses and our dreamscapes. This is a book you need in your life. Open it and smell the bread, the salt, flour and water of our lives.

  Sheila Fiona Black, co-editor, Beauty is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability
                 George Wallace