Riding By: Collected Poems

Author: Gerald Harris ISBN 978-1-62137-960-7 (eBook)   BOOK DESCRIPTION This New York poet has been compared, in a Kirkus review, to Walt Whitman, Hart Crane and John Asbury. His poems graphically capture images, examine relationships, wrestle with mortality, explore foreign places, express love, toy with romance and protest Man's inhumanity. The killing of Trayvon Martin in the name of "stand your ground", being lost in Paris, responding to a line-cutter at a Starbucks, describing a home run as Rilke might have, all of these moments and many more, are dealt with vividly with melancholy, irony or a touch of humor. The throb and hum of the city beat persistently beneath these poems as does the clacking of the long-gone Third Avenue El which once traveled above the streets of the poet's youth. There is beauty here and grit as the city takes away even as it gives.   ABOUT THE AUTHOR Gerald Harris is a semi-retired NYC Criminal Court Judge. Raised in the Bronx his legal career has been divided between public service and the private practice of law. Harris was an Assistant DA in Manhattan, the County Attorney of Westchester County, Deputy Commissioner of the Administration for Children's Services and Executive Director of the Mayor's Commission to Combat Police Corruption. He also served as Chair of the NYC Board of Correction. He claims as his proudest moment his refusal, as a young prosecutor, to try an obscenity case against the comedian Lenny Bruce. Harris' poem, Home Run,was chosen a semi-finalist for the 2016 Earl Weaver Baseball Writing Prize. He has read his poems at KGB in the East Village, the Bronx Museum and the Tannery in Santa Cruz, California.