Other Romes

Other Romes gathers together an eclectic range of influences-from Fellini films, to eating contests, Jesuit poetry, and jetliners-to confront the awkward but inevitable relationship between personal narratives and the larger public sphere. And like the title city that haunts much of this work, Mong refuses to settle on any one voice or form. Restrained at times as a Latin ode, or expansive as Whitman, these poems take erotic love and in-flight disaster through subtle, fissuring syllabics, strict sestinas, free verse, and more. The end result is an expansive collection, which as poet and critic David Baker remarks, demonstrates that "the privacy of the lyric world is part and parcel with the communal imagination."