The ceaseless background noise of the city
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Ambient poems contribute to the System poem alongside Stop or Station poems. Whereas Stop poems arise from walks in the vicinity of individual Metro stations, Ambient poems emerge from notes and texts generated in a looser engagement with Shanghai
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In nearly 20 years, my family and I have lived in four apartments in four neighborhoods, and explored the city widely and variously, beginning with long nights out and bars and clubs and parties then mellowing into parenthood and dinner parties and kids and careering
This is a source of course, too
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Some Ambient poems will have been published elsewhere. Others will be newly arranged and composed from notes, photos and memory.