I present a dark photo of myself at 19.
I know it looks as if I'm smoking, but I'm not. In fact, it's an altogether different bad habit. Lost in thought, I'm nibbling on the nub of my ballpoint--no doubt my lucky Papermate Slimline, glowing with the fire caused by the incredible velocity in which I wrote, perhaps immortalizing a pub napkin with one of my early poems, let's say, "Scenes from a Sonata," which appeared umpteen years later in
Hunger Mountain.
Speaking of, "Scenes from a Sonata" is the opening poem in my
Greatest Hits, which, last I checked, still isn't listed (for whatever reason) among the other such chapbooks at Pudding House. However, as far as I know, you can purchase the book there. In fact, you should purchase it--by whatever means necessary-- because the Google
preview of
Greatest Hits doesn't include the book in whole. Also, the preview contains errors, most significantly a misprint of the aforementioned poem, that were corrected before the actual release of
Greatest Hits, so I'm not giving a link
here.
Or perhaps, despite my wearing a winter coat in the above photo, I had just written
"Heat."
