Boss Cupid

A great poet''s freshest most provocative book.. He dreams at the center of a closed systemLike the prison system or a system of loveWhere folktale recipe and household customRefer back to the maze that they are of.--from A System: PCP or Angel Dust . Taste and appetite are contraposed in Boss Cupid the twelfth book of poems by the quintessential San Francisco poet who is also the quintessential craftsman and quintessentially a love poet though not of quintessential love.Variations on how we are ruled by our desires these poems make a startling and eloquent gloss on wanton want moving freely from the story of King David and Bathsheba to Arthur Rimbaud''s diet to the tastes of Jeffrey Dahmer. As warm and intelligent as it is ribald and cunning this collection of Thom Gunn''s is his richest yet.