Hit the jackpot at last! Mind you, I've come close to it several times. The anthology, TRAVELING, turned out almost the way I wanted it. But ANYONE FOR LOVE? is absolutely perfect. If you don't like the covers, if you hate the colors, if you think the lay-out is stupid and can't stand the way the type is indented, if you object to visual poems and find some of the photos are a little bit fuzzy, then blame me, not Lulu and not the printer! Every single page of the book turned out exactly the way I wanted it. A visual feast! As for the poems themselves, others have judged them pretty good. I like them too. In fact I love to read them out loud.

My only disappointment is a belated one. Recently, I came upon my original version of "A Modest Love" and I must confess that I now prefer this one to the revised poem that is printed on page 64. What do you think? Here's the original:

Perhaps, when the moon is setting,
and all the stars of temporal sky have vanished
into the echo of last evening’s rain,
when we sheltered beneath the pasteboard frieze
of a tubular steel café,
drinking Beethoven with hot chocolate,
Mendelssohn with raisin-bread,
perhaps you didn’t see the anguish in my eyes,
for I knew we were marking time:
I knew I’d no hope in eternity
of ever winning your love.

No intellect mine to wing the cliffs of knowledge,
or dream in the caverns of thought;
no riches did I bring, no gifts,
but a shadow.

Yet perhaps, if you lie awake,
listening to the sea-shell sound of the sea,
monotonous, never-changing, almost imperceptible,
perhaps, you will hear my voice;
for one day, deep in the dream-time,
when a multitude nights have scaled
the desert rim of the moon
and dissolved in eternal dust,
you may remember me.