A few fun facts about "Crucial Sprawl"

- There will be somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 poems. Give or take. In the book.

- Some of the poems are so long that it's sort of insane.

- Others, meanwhile, are absurdly brusque in their dimensions. (None of the poems are, strickly speaking, about urban planning, or urban renewal, or anything suburban, really. It's just, well, I wrote this one poem that ended with the phrase "crucial sprawl," and I was like, "I should title a poem 'Crucial Sprawl,'" and ultimately I preferred it as the overall book title, the original title being Stay Local, said original title befitting this book when the overall concept was different, when I didn't yet realize how shitty a year 2009 would ultimately turn out to be.)

- The rest fall between those two extremes, but are not "middling,” as it were.

- There are five epigrams, which is too many epigrams for a poetry book.

- There will be poems about other people, some of whom you've met and (maybe) admired.

- There will be an appendix saluting popular and unpopular musics of the era (and prior eras) that the author enjoyed - in many cases, more often than was healthy - while writing the book.

- Various purple MS Paint pictures, drawn by my only begotten son, will adorn the book cover. Inside, there may be photographs. That's still being sorted out.

- There will be poems that may make you want to throw the book from a moving vehicle in frustration.