Rhapsodies of a Repeat Offender

the long version

The collection's cornerstones are two rhapsodies - long poems which combine the richness of a novel, the intimacy of a lyric, and the immediacy of a performance. At the climax of the first, the poet meets his double, a dying boy whose shameful moniker is "Baldie." As if in response to this explosive confrontation, the poet dares to write a second, wilder "Rhapsody"--A confessional, improvisatory fantasia, virtually a book in itself, where abjection blossoms into formally-innovative extravagance. Three sequences complete the collection: "Piano Life," a series of haunted meditations on music and mortality; "Erotic Collectibles," a disarmingly unsentimental account of sexual awakening; and "Star Vehicles," in which the poet sees his perplexities reflected in Bette Davis, Sophia Loren, Ida Lupino, and other leading ladies.