AAA Vacation Guide

By Ernest Hilbert b. 1970 Ernest Hilbert

“Philadelphia isn’t as bad as Philadelphians say it is.”
—Billboard on Interstate 95

Paris in the Spring, Autumn in New York,

Singers pair a city with a season

As though it belonged to it all year long.

They should try to put a few more to work:

Trenton in winter needs a good reason;

Scranton in summer seems so very wrong.

How about Cincinnati in the spring?

Autumn in Passaic, or in Oakland?

Some cities just lack glamour and appeal,

And there is no point arguing the thing.

No one reads through stacks of brochures to spend

A honeymoon in Allentown. Let’s get real.

Most places on the map, you must believe,

No one wants to visit, only to leave.

Ernest Hilbert, “AAA Vacation Guide” from Sixty Sonnets. Copyright © 2009 by Ernest Hilbert. Reprinted by permission of Red Hen Press.

Source: Sixty Sonnets (Red Hen Press, 2009)

Biography

Born in Philadelphia and raised in southern New Jersey, poet, critic, and editor Ernest Hilbert received a BA from Rutgers University and a PhD in English literature from St. Catherine’s College of Oxford University, where he studied with James Fenton and Jon Stallworthy.

In his debut collection, Sixty Sonnets (2009), Hilbert establishes a variation on the sonnet form, employing an intricate rhyme scheme and varied line . . .

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