Unfinished City

Unfinished City, by Nan Cohen, was selected by the editors of Gunpowder Press for the inaugural Michael Dryden Poetry Prize. The prize honors a collection of poems by a high- or middle-school teacher.

Praise for Unfinished City:

Rarely does one encounter a book whose moral symmetry finds such eloquence and form in lines spare enough to encompass our deepest questions, yet taut enough to sustain us through grief, through the terrors of doubt and oblivion. By undertaking one of our greatest and abiding symbols, the Tower of Babel, Nan Cohen confidently asserts we speak our histories and lives in the bright language of poetry and in the dazzling prophecies of our songs.

—Major Jackson, author of Roll Deep

Unfinished City is a collection of sensual, thoughtful poems illustrating the tender mercies that animate our human lives. Bookish in the best possible way, Cohen interrogates the Good Book as she probes the compassion and grace inherent in creations and creators. She returns to the story of Eve’s creation, refashioning it in each chapter as she reminds us our survival requires careful eyes, patience, a willingness to repeat, to wait, to engage with the unfairness and asymmetries of Time’s Arrow in all its forms.

—Judith Baumel, author of The Kangaroo Girl