SADIE FARRELL: A legendary figure from Gangs of New York-era Manhattan. According to stories, after losing her ear in a bar fight, Sadie stole a ship and spent a year as a river pirate on the Hudson and Harlem rivers. Poet and author Max Sparber tells her knockabout, darkly comic, and ultimately tragic tale using the language of the era, borrowing from the cadence of folk songs, the fractured rhymes of newspaper doggerel, and the Irish-soaked slang of Manhattan's Old Fourth Ward.
