Rhapsodies of a Repeat Offender

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.Koestenbaum, Wayne is the author of 'Rhapsodies of a Repeat Offender' with ISBN 9780892552122 and ISBN 0892552123.