Rachel King wrote the poems in
City Walks
upon returning to her hometown of Portland, Oregon, after over a dozen years of living away. Their "precise details wired to lively music and memorable images" (Mark Wagenaar) investigate a known place, witness gentrification, acknowledge death, and insist on the possibility of beauty and joy despite it all: "I have rarely been happier than walking miles / around my city, learning its history, / while watching people play out their needs" ("City Walks"). Full of devotion and intensity, these poems "call us to love a little more humbly, a little less selfishly" (Charity Gingerich).