Its individual poems are well written, and there are a lot of reference to the Catholic faith, including several subtle ones that I think could only be picked up by practitioners. However, it does not gel as a whole.

Central Air: Poems by Mike Puican is the poet’s debut collection. Puican has published poems in Poetry, Bloomsbury Review, Crab Orchard Review, and New England Review, among others. His work has also been featured on WBEZ, Chicago’s NPR affiliate. Puican was a member of the 1996 Chicago Slam Team and holds an M.F.A. in poetry from Warren Wilson College.

Central Air is a love letter to Chicago. More than that, anyone who has grown up in a large northern city can easily relate to the poetry. The opening poem “And the Guachos Sing” captures that late summer feeling in the city. It took me back to my younger days in the north. “Chicago” sees a different part of the city.

City of car alarms, a chair
flying out a second story window– no one asks if there is a story.
Cigarettes
in a doorway, congregation
at Sunday service holier than thou…

It is a city of contradictions and blue-collar life. Simple pleasures exist in red sunsets and church picnics. There are junk cars and learning to fix them. There is also simple humor in stories like “The Magi Ask for Directions” and “Joke.” Puican captures the reality of the old Catholic immigrants and their young Americanized grandchildren sharing the same streets and different ideas. There is the big city feeling written into the poetry. The growing up and not quite being able to comprehend all that you see — pollution, industry, abandoned buildings, and houses and busses stained with soot. You lived in your neighborhood, secure. Outside of that, things were unknown.

Fifteen years ago, you stood at the edge of Chicago, head cocked like a crow eyeing garbage, broken, overflowing. You were young and thought you knew nothing: you left blanks for what you did not yet know.

Central Air took me back 40 years and more to growing up in a large city on the north coast. I relived memories in the poems. If poetry is meant to capture common feelings and experiences in a wide range of people, Puican triumphs.

Urban! From the first poem, I breathe urban portray of Chicago.

My favorate line: “most days my story’s told in dollar signs”.

From working in Marketing to suicide, the poet paints us many pictures of urban lives, modern living, etc. It reminds me slightly of Bukowski, however, there are most of times too many images and happenings in one poem, and it becomes hard to follow. I’d venture to think if there are less events, incidents in one poem, the idea could be better translated.