The City of Dreadful Night

About this book

James Thomson walks through a city where darkness seems permanent. Crowds pass one another without comfort, and every street returns him to the same desolate thought.

The City of Dreadful Night is an extended poem of despair and estrangement, drawing its title and atmosphere from the modern city. Thomson's rhythms carry the speaker through visions of exhaustion, failed hope and a world emptied of consoling belief. Its darkness is sustained with unusual discipline. Even the most crowded passages preserve the solitude of a person unable to imagine an escape from his own mind.