Night of the Republic

Poetry about places—from a supermarket to a strip club to a suburban home—from a poet who “seeks what lies at the deepest level of the human heart” ( Chicago Tribune ).   In Night of the Republic , Alan Shapiro takes us on an unsettling night tour of America’s public places—a gas station restroom, shoe store, convention hall, and race track, among others—and in stark Edward Hopper–like imagery reveals the surreal and dreamlike features of these familiar but empty night spaces. Shapiro finds