Somerville poet Afaa Michael Weaver has a new collection of verse out titled: “City of Eternal Spring.” Endicott College creative writing student Paige Shippie picked out her favorite poem from the collection and told us why.

  

“In his travels in the East, Weaver’s identity underwent a thought provoking journey of enlightenment. This journey has left him unable to assimilate back into Western culture, and has left him resistant to the superficial demands of a career that is dictated by time. When one so strongly identifies with another culture and then becomes immersed in it, it is an almost impossible task to ask them to assume the role they left behind in their society. “Culture shock” is the simple phrase that can be applied to this phenomena, but Weaver shows that it can be so much more, especially when the culture that you are unaccustomed to is your own. The last line ‘the masks wait for me,’ speaks to me in that not only is he giving up his originality in a world filled with people like himself, but he has given up the role of a discoverer in a foreign land for merely a worker in chartered territory. “

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