There's a lot of fake anger out there, masking dangerous fear. Daisy Fried gives us the real thing: anger born of despair, love, desire, injustice, and loss. She's a grave robber, revivifying the corpse of Baudelaire to mess with him and help her to cope. His ghoulish presence accompanies her as she haunts Philadelphia, 'that old worker, ' recording riots, suffering, stench. This book has killer atmosphere, fragrances fine and foul. It growls with the cavernous hunger of our 'graveyard Nation' mid-pandemic. But the calm center of THE YEAR THE CITY EMPTIED is Fried's dying husband. Just try and read his last lucid words, swansong of a lost world, without choking up.--Jennifer Moxley

Poetry