Rowan Ricardo Phillips, as told to Words Without Borders:

This isn't meant to minimize all of the heartbreak that has taken place in New York during my lifetime. But how do you itemize, much less form a superlative, from that? Heartbreak, like all conjugations, exists so that we can speak.


also, as part of the same series, Mathea Harvey on New York City's mood:

I’m very aware that my mood colors what I perceive as the mood of the city. It’s constantly shifting. On a good day, I see people singing in their cars, a beautiful old lady with braided white hair taking two identical dachshunds for a walk, and I sniff the bacon-and-egg-scented air coming from the deli wafting down into the subway with delight. Those are days when New York seems to thrum with possibility and wonder. On a bad day, people on the subway look angry and tired and everything smells of feet. I gave that realization to Roboboy (a half-robot half-human character in my second to last book of poems—Modern Life). He’s trying to understand the word “subjectivity” and his friend explains: “You know how if you’re in a bad mood a wet dog looks one way and if you’re in a good mood it looks another? It’s like wearing tinted gasses, only on the inside.” It’s really all about where your eyes fall.