Contents
Note To the Reader
I.
Out of Metropolis
Stone Soup
The Planet Krypton
The Sleeping
Of Your Father’s Indiscretions and the Train to California
Lunch Break with Ted Berrigan and Neighbor’s House on Fire
Drawing Rosie’s Train Trip
Seizure
Frying Trout While Drunk
“Into the clearing of . . .”
She Is Six
When Father Decided He Did Not Love Her Anymore
Outside Room Six
Self-Portrait as Items in a Snowy Lithograph
Ordinary Objects
Big Black Car
II.
The Garden
The Technology of Love
Heartsick
Blonde Bombshell
The White Dress
Self-Portrait at Eighteen
Portrait of the Author
The Politics of Narrative: Why I Am a Poet
III.
Self-Portrait
Dressing the Parts
Starlet in Satin Dressing Gown
Homage to Sharon Stone
On Waking after Dreaming of Raoul
Inspiration
Spite—Homage to Sylvia Plath
Walt, I Salute You!
The Occupation
“Hello, Mallarmé,”
In English in a Poem
A Poem Like an Automobile Can Take You Anywhere,
The Past
inside gertrude stein
IV.
My Life
Kiss
Grieving Was
Dying Was
“I tried to flatter myself into extinction, . . .”
“While my mother lies in a hospital bed . . .”
Ars Poetica
Halfway Through the Book I’m Writing
The Burial
These Days,
Talking with Frank O’Hara
Metamorphosis
Stray Dogg
Dogg Howse
Hang Dogg
Who Iz Dogg ?
Dead Dogg
V.
The Angels of the Resurrection
The Dig
The Murder Writer
Dead Girl’s Bedroom
Soliloquy of the Depressed Book
“April 18, the 21st Century”
Homage to Dickinson
Like God,
Then, Suddenly—
Acknowledgments