Equally crude and charming, locker-room macho and sensitive, these poems are always singularly marked by formal ingenuity and stylistic élan. A deeply felt and original collection, this work understands that (as its epigraph, in the words of Diderot, insists) “there is a bit of testicle at the bottom of our most sublime feelings and our purest tenderness.”

Alessandro Porco is a poet, critic, and scholar from Toronto, Canada. He earned his Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Buffalo. His research focuses on twentieth-century poetry and poetics. Porco lives in Wilmington, where he is an Assistant Professor of English at UNCW.

Jerrold Levy was born and raised in New York City. He is the grandson of poet Mina Loy and son of art dealer Julien Levy. He attended Black Mountain College from 1947 to 1950, studying under Ilya Bolotowsky, Merce Cunningham, and Charles Olson. In 1959, Levy received his Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Chicago.

Richard Negro grew up in Fair Lawn, New Jersey, a suburb located twenty-five miles outside New York City. He attended Black Mountain College from 1947 to 1950 and was a star pupil of physicist Natasha Goldowski and poet M.C. Richards. He later studied physics at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Alessandro Porco is a poet, critic, and scholar from Toronto, Canada. He earned his Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Buffalo. His research focuses on twentieth-century poetry and poetics. Porco lives in Wilmington, North Carolina, where he is an Assistant Professor of English at UNCW.

Alessandro Porco's profile page

"Pun-mad, filled with gratuitous and funny allusions to low and high culture."  “Winnipeg Free Press

"With a delectable and saucy style, Porco does not fail to astonish by performing a tense merger between items of high scholarly reference and pop culture....Porco's work is highly deserving of all the acclaim it receives."  “Scene Magazine

"An ear for the musicality of language....[Porco] loves to muck around in the wide world of literature, ideas, and to implicitly challenge poetic conventions...a skillful poet at marshalling the cacophony of our times."  “Prairie Fire