Seventeen years in the making, Gordon Massman's The Essential Numbers 1991 - 2008 is the collection that his followers have long awaited, and that new readers will never forget. If you have never read Massman before, think the Walt Whitman of Abu Ghraib and Internet kiddie-porn. Think the lovechild of Baudelaire and the Marquis de Sade. Think Dante's Inferno re-written by its guests. Then realize that no catchy comparisons come close to capturing the scope, intensity, and courage of The Essential Numbers. Simply put, if you have never read Massman before, then you have never encountered anything like these poems.
"This is the kind of book you can t ask for until you have it."
--Blake Butler, author of Scorch Atlas, publisher of HTML Giant
"Oh good, now, NOW, there is something to talk about -- something that, timid people be damned, will enforce response on multiple fronts. . . . In the same way that there is much to be discussed and discovered -- not to mention felt, as being supreme among the beings -- in the works of artists like Joel Peter-Witkin, Hans Bellmer, Paul Mccarthy, David Hamilton, et al. -- there is a similar immanence in even the very gesture of Mr. Massman's work, despite the anti-disclaimer on the back of the book, which is all the more invitation, right?"
--Brandon Shimoda, author of The Alps and The Inland Sea
About the Author
Gordon Massman divides his time between Medford, MA, and the island of Frenchboro, ME. Poems from The Essential Numbers have appeared in The Numbers (Pavement Saw Press) as well as in Another Chicago Magazine, Antioch Review, Artful Dodge, Chelsea, Confrontation. Connecticut Review, CV2 (Canada), Cortland Review, Exquisite Corpse, The Fiddlehead (Canada), 5AM, The Georgia Review, Green Mountains Review, Greensboro Review, The Harvard Review, Hiram Poetry Review, Iron (UK), Karamu, Malahat Review (Canada), Many Mountains Moving, Membrane, The New York Quarterly, Left Curve, The Literary Review, Old Crow Review, Paperplates (Canada) Pavement Saw, Penny Dreadful, Pleiades, Prairie Journal (Canada), Prism International (Canada), Quarter After Eight, Rampike (Canada), Rattle, Response, Tarpaulin Sky, Third Coast, Willow Springs, Windsor Review (Canada), and Yellow Silk.