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The collection's cornerstones are two rhapsodies - long poems which combine the richness of a novel,...
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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.
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