A small room inside a bay window. A single bed, a table and chair, and a sink. I could manage something larger, with more conveniences, but I could never match the view.

The stack of books beside my bed gets ever higher. Atop it now is Lynn Crosbie's Queen Rat: New and Selected Poems (1997), which is about to be re-issued. The publisher, Anansi, asked me to write its Introduction, and I said yes.

Queen Rat selects from Crosbie's first three books and includes three longer serial works, one of which, "Alphabet City", was commissioned by a now-defuct journal, also called Alphabet City.

So much of what Crosbie writes about in "Alphabet City" is gone. All those amazing bars and clubs. Even those still open, like the Cameron House, are no longer what they once were. But neither am I, nor Lynn.