Author Interview with Michael Boughn, author of City: Book One: Singular Assumptions

Taking Charles Olson’s “Poem 143—the festival aspect” as its provocation and partner in conversation, Michael Boughn’s City sets out on a voyage to explore the Three Towns central to Olson’s poem and the Vedic myth that it responds to. Combining observations and commentary on current affairs with references to and considerations of traditional texts by Dante, Augustine, Fra Carnevale, Weber, Bachelard, Whitehead, Benjamin, Agamben, and a host of others, City weaves multiple threads together into a tapestry of urban experience that is always both here and beyond.

Book One: Singular Assumptions opens the journey with a tour of the first town’s charms and attractions—a map that moves from bar to arena through a perennial traffic jam, while taking in the occasional parade and other digressions that only the City, with its infinite possibilities, can offer up.