Our thanks to "Broadway Boogie," "Cross Country," "Four Zoas," "The Greenfield Review, "The Paris Review," and "The Village Voice," and their editors, for permission to reprint some of these poems.
Our thanks to the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts for their generous support of this and other New Rivers Publications
New Rivers Press 1975
copyright ©1975 Richard Elman
“Much of this book concerns a young painter’s suicide. In tender and angry poems, Elman questions the reasons for this waste of life and talent. Like an archaeologist he excavates his memories, examining them for clues to understanding. That he does not, at last, understand seems the truest thing in these poems.” - Booklist
This is a selection of poems occasioned , in part, by two trips to Revolutionary Nicaragua in 1978 and 1979.
The dedication is: For Alice again, and again...and Mario...
For *Paul, Harry, Chuck, Brian, Bill, Mark, & Lou
For Alice
For Roberta Pryor
"To the conscientious and dedicated employees of the Central Intelligence Agency, whoever you are, for persevering in your efforts to alchemically change certain literary imaginations into mush and shit."
"We live in a dangerous world. So do the ants.
Nevertheless, they cooperate."
-Zoltan Gestetner ("Stimme")
