Urban & Landscape/Ordinary Lives by Michael Crane

Michael Crane’s Urban & Landscape/Ordinary Lives (his second in the Flying Islands Pocket Poets Series) is a book well described by its title. The book deals with city grit and with rural reminiscences – a poetry of real people – but mainly about relations among the typically nameless and unnoticed persons of everyday life. Michael doesn’t believe writers should be the heroes of their work and that most people are more interesting than him. So the third section does not feature the author and includes poems about other people. There are poems here ranging from a woman who leaves for Cuba, to a prisoner dealing with life and death.