This new collection was a trial indeed for me. I had any number of troubles with deciding just how I would attack this project. Would it simply be a series of little meaningless pieces... doilies for the foyer of purgatory... or, as when I first started, would it be a few utterences of doggerel-- anthemic transactions with a weary inner core-- just to pull me out of a late summer nosedive? I certainly had my doubts when I started... and, I must admit, that the final product also leaves me with some questions and feelings that are quite unresolved.

Perhaps by simply retailing my changes to you, I can get some more perspective on the process in which I was engaged. I stumbled over Wallace Stevens again, as will be clear a few poems into the small collection. After having pleased myself and eased my mind with "Unchained Medley," I decided to try a few more, and maybe put together a perfectly twinkly trinket of pearls. A philosphe's watch fob, or something of that sort.

Some of this flippancy and despair has remained encoded in the titles of poems that still stand. "Mundane Topic," "Eye Moderne a la Mode," and "Gratuitous Title" are examples of how the most errant and idiot impulses of a mind bleak with despair can become rescued by the multitudinous impulses of the artist.

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