The cover of this book came about, as is usual with my own titles, at the last minute. Having just gotten back from a great time at the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival, where a NJ Marxist (last of a breed?) Amiri Baraka was the only poet to speak of the necessity of truth and beauty, I meditated morosely over my own 400 rejections in the past year and a half. Saturday night, in the middle of the festival, I came home to find a 401st rejection... Since each poetry packet contained an average of three poems per packet, this sum of rejection soared to 1203 poems of mine rejected. Not as collections to be published. Not book deals or other, more expensive, and harder to negociate publications, but simple poetry magazine rejections! Well, maybe you're thinking... a lot of rejects, but he's not telling us how many acceptences he got during the last year and a half. Well, I'll tell you. Zero. Nada. None. Not one. Every single poem sent out was rejected. I was pretty asounded, and fairly dismayed. Anyway, this is the cover that I came up with trying to get rid of these new albatrosses.

One poem is given you as a sample of the audial qualities in this work. I read this one at the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival 2002, hanging with Gregory Schwartz underground in the GristMill. Unchained Medley.mp3 [1.03 MB]