Night of the Republic

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Night of the Republic showcases one of America’s best poets not only working at the height of his powers but pushing into new and exciting territory as well. In Night of the Republic, Alan Shapiro visits a gas station restroom, a shoe store, a convention hall, and a racetrack, among other places—and in stark Edward Hopper–like imagery reveals the surreal and dreamlike quality of these familiar but empty night spaces. Shapiro finds in them not the expected alienation but rather an odd, companionable spirit of a community of solitude rising from the quiet emptiness. The collection also includes moving meditations of his childhood in Brookline, Massachusetts, and of tragic and haunting events such as the Cuban missile crisis and the assassination of JFK. While Night of the Republic is Shapiro’s most ambitious, inventive, and accessible collection to date, it is also his most timely and urgent for the acute way it illuminates the mingling of private obsessions with public space.