Review by Cheryl Ann Passanisi
Sad City
by Craig Kite
BlazeVOX
November 2025, 104 pages, ISBN-13: 978-1609645236
In the middle of the title poem, “Sad City”, Kite writes:
…p-p-p-post modern
p-p-p-p-post mortem
is post-apocalyptic,
produced a rapist president.
The stuttering “p’s”, juxtaposition of “post modern” and “post mortem”, and a statement that blandly expresses a political fact, is like a splash of cold water in the face. No more need of dystopian, post-apocalyptic novels or movies: we are living in one.
The poem starts out with:
Aliens gaze
down on a human metropolis
and cannot understand
what they see…
…a cancerous mass
on a formerly immaculate
body.
Later: “God tunes out the city’s prayers”. Then:
An alienated man
dreams of making a connection…
he dreams
that home is a place
where he is accepted and safe.
Perhaps this is the essence of the post-apocalyptic world: God has tuned out our prayers, we are at the whims of a “rapist president” and we are alienated, unable to make trusted, safe connections.
The theme of alienation and “alienated man” runs throughout the book. But how do you “fit in” to a dystopian world? How do you find home, a place of acceptance and safety in a world that is disordered, dangerous and threatening? Is it even desirable to “fit in” if the world is capricious, cruel and unjust? These questions are at the edge of each line, each poem and causes a sense of unease, dis-ease. An unsettled feeling pervades the book and creates a haunted, hunted notion that sits on the shoulder bearing down and giving more weight to the dysphoric scenes.
The book is divided up into sections: Blue State; Red State; Purple Suburb; American Dystopic. Throughout the book, the precarious nature of the postmodern world is explored through vignettes of the “gig” economy, mortgage and housing crisis, addiction, pandemic and looming environmental catastrophe. These provide concrete examples of the insecurity and angst induced by the current state of disordered priorities in our society.
There is also a grappling with a higher being and relationship to God. He encounters the Ten Commandments in “Thou Shalt Not Make unto Thee Any Graven Image”. Deftly and with theological clarity he explains the hypocrisy of the “religious right” in accumulating personal wealth and at the same time cutting programs that give assistance to the poor:
…their possessing
a graven image,
of their idolatry,and their worship
of empire & money…And when the rich man asked
how he could get to heaven,
Jesus told him to give away
his possessions to the poor.But …he went away sad,
unable to let go of his wealth
It occurs to me that much of the religious right is misanthropic in direct opposition to the gospel.
In “Hoi Polloi” he says: “Some fly toward light/some creatures flee…/who intercede with angels…” There is a constant struggle between the horrors and neuroses of the postmodern and a straining toward meaning and grace: “I make myself a martyr./My rapturous death I’m awaiting./ My feverish desire/is for my windy scattering//Swing low, Sweet chariot/Lower/lower/lower”. Flirting with nihilism and at the same time invoking hymns of salvation and homecoming. These incongruent moments add to the feeling of anxiety and unease.
Exuberant love and heartbreak appear in “Bending Spoons with Prayer Waves”: “I was pretty. And your stomach was/monarchs all pinned down.//…Spinning plates, bending spoons,/with prayer waves, levitating…” Then one day: “the sexiest lords/of man-cave implosions/will wake themselves up/from regret…” and “when I came to your bedroom door,/you’d say Baby, I’m just praying/But it sounded like /you were losing your mind.” Another opportunity to connect is thwarted and unable to be fulfilled, unable to fulfill the deep desire for “home”.
In “The Small Print” Kite explores contradictory images and invisible forces that shape the world as well as injustices that abound. He catalogues harm to children and innocents as well as environmental damage to the ozone. Peril is all around including possibly self-inflicted harm. He says: “My black box is full of prayers” and then near the end of the litany he says: “I am filled with/the most stubborn questions/for pastors/and doctors/and pharmacists”. The mandate for suffering remains one of my nagging concerns and questions if I could interrogate God.
The poems are peppered with gems such as: “Jesus the gentle socialist” and “God, the (absentee) Father” and “We could smell the shelf-life of our youth”. I appreciate the indictment of God, the higher power: that we have been abandoned, our prayers not heard, our world unraveling to a dystopian conclusion.
There are still simple pleasures such as making bread in “Home Economics” and snoring on a comfy couch in “Napping”.
The philosophical conundrum of how to fit in with a dystopian world results in struggle and leads to insecurity, neurosis and dependence on medications. When human relationships are challenging he turns to pets. In “This Cat is Now my Cat” Kite describes his relationship with his girlfriend’s cat and how he prefers the cat because the cat does not correct his grammar, doesn’t judge him for eating take-out food and they can “…be nocturnal together,/caterwauling at the yellow moon.” He is soon “Back on the Dating Apps”, a poem that describes the process of coming to terms with the struggles of how to find, connect and fit in with an intimate partner.
The eloquence of the poem, “I Am Air”, demonstrates a lyrical aspect and a surprising departure from the gloom and helplessness of other poems:
My body is a sandstorm.
I can smell like honeysuckle.
I’ve brushed everyone’s cheek
Who’s ever died.I’m the rustling in the reeds…
I also propel boats
of food or refugees….
Tomorrow, I’ll carry you birds.
In “Intimacy Problem” he grapples with identity and possessions:
then how many dents
Does it take to get
To the center
Of my personal snow globe?A ballerina in there…
…my entire collection of books
And Christmas ornaments
I have now left at the entrance
Of a Salvation Army
“A Subterranean Hellscape” ends the collection in a “No exit” type of scene, nightmarish and senseless. Menace pervades and seems to win out.
The mundane and the surreal intertwine throughout the book. Danger lurks everywhere. He is constantly evading harm from trying to avoid being hit by a car while riding a bike to being pushed off the platform in the subway. There are the routine concerns about safety and jobs as well as the deeper concerns about the environment along with whimsical images of plastic bags under the sink, what to do with them, how to reuse or recycle and what they represent about the peril of environmental degradation.
Kite is a poet, musician and actor and has worked as a journalist and in human rights domestically and all over the world. All of these experiences inform his writing and bring an authenticity, edge and poignancy to the work.
The book title Sad City conjures a blend of pathos and amusement: it has the shape and, for me, conjures the imagery of an emoji, a sad face superimposed upon a cityscape. It captures something of what is involved to survive and thrive in the teeth of a mechanism that is indifferent to our plight and might as well consume us as opposed to offering a path to grace. It is stunningly too near a mirror of the present society we inhabit.
About the reviewer: Cheryl Ann Passanisi was born and raised on the central coast of California and went to school at California State University, Long Beach, and University of California, San Francisco where she earned a master’s degree in Nursing. She lives on the San Francisco peninsula and works at a teaching hospital as a nurse practitioner. She is active in local community theater and opera chorus