How to Proceed in the Arts

Scrawled comics and cribbed illustrations, simultaneous Creeley and Spicer parodies, fake interviews, fake blurbs, real e-mail, dream narrative, conventional lyric, altered rejection letters and drawing room drama are all part of Sullivan's lesson on How to Proceed in the Arts. Sullivan, who publishes Detour Books and the Webzine Readme, is the inventor of FLARF!, a mostly unprintable poetic subgenre (""RELAX! NOT going to wear my OINTMENT PUPPET/ 'cept `if you're interested in doing my book'""), and a regular contributor to Rain Taxi. Through all of Sullivan's deeply felt undermining of pretense and posturing comes an extraordinary, positive lighting of the way out, ""[t]he poet popped open &/ hung like a jack-o-lantern illuminating/ the entire mountaintop.""