Most of the poems in Lost Republics were written in Moscow. One of the world's great cities, Moscow's immensity extends a strange sort of citizenship to all those who live there, and these poems reflect that state of being; they come from the perception of a Western European living in the capital of Eastern Europe: simultaneously belonging and not belonging. This book is about Russia but looks back across the border to Europe. It begins on a train traveling between St. Petersburg and Moscow and ends with a boat drifting off the Dalmatian coast.