Winner of the 2010 Akron Poetry Prize, Le Spleen de Poughkeepsie is tender anti-epic, a grunge-tinged love song to America's benighted post-industrial heartland. Harmon's Poughkeepsie shimmers just beyond the borders of banal recognition. &"If you're not part of the problem, / you're part of the lengthening / tragedy,&" Harmon writes in an introductory pastoral, seeking out &"the stray / detours and workarounds of the secret / city inside the more obvious one.on the outskirts of the absurd / attention to the material life&". Poughkeepsie is that city of the heart where no one can look at anyone else &"alone,&" where &"the noise of beauty&" is a cop's bullet polishing off a &"traffic-struck doe,&" where &"five dollars takes you anywhere in this town / except out of it.