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.

Michael Boughn worked in the Teamsters for nearly 10 years before returning to university to earn a PhD in 1986 after studying with poets John Clarke and Robert Creeley. He is the author of ten books of poetry, including Iterations of the Diagonal, Dislocations in Crystal, 22 Skidoo / SubTractions, Cosmographia – a post-Lucretian faux micro-epic (short-listed for the Governor General’s Award for Poetry in 2011), and most recently, Great Canadian Poems for the Aged Vol. 1 Illus. Ed. (BookThug, 2012). He has also published books for young adults, including the Maple Award nominated Into the World of the Dead, a mystery novel, and a descriptive bibliography of the American poet, H.D. He recently edited (with Victor Coleman) Robert Duncan’s The H.D. Book for the University of California Press. He has also published numerous articles on film, writing, architecture and music, most recently "The War on Art and Zero Dark Thirty" in CineAction. He has taught courses at the University of Toronto since 1993, recently focusing primarily on American writing with special emphasis on the innovative writers of the 20th and 21st centuries.

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Praise for City: Book 1: Singular Assumptions

Michael Boughn's City isÉ explicit in its celebration of the urban as a pumping heart with architecture. Boughn approaches the Ôcommon' with an open language, knowing full well that some who share the space may not Ôunderstand.' His Walden is a full-canopied forest of neighbourhoods within and around which true solace is found, but only after much searching.
- Victor Coleman

Singular Assumptions (City, Book One) takes a bite out of the holism apple... and sows articulations of wiggle into the densest gridlocks of rigid city posturing.... Boughn sings for the potentials of life's flourish with soaring ripostes, the bittersweet paradox of rigour for jazz, and a congenial shrugging cheer.
- David Peter Clark

Boughn speaks as a combatant, always.... Take care, this book is signed by a barbarian....[with] a history of being overlooked.
- Oliver Cusimano