This collection came out in 1987, but contained poems from 1981-1985 ... right up to the point that Tripp stopped drinking. As such, it's sort of a pivotal book, reflecting the "old poems", but being the first of the "new books", which eventually resulted in Eschaton Books.
About the Author: Brendan Tripp began writing poetry in high school, continued into college, and expanded his writing in his years as a P.R. Executive and Publisher. He eventually settled into a pattern of writing 250 poems per year, and continued doing so for a dozen or so years in the 80's and 90's. Every year he'd produce a comb-bound collection of all of that year's output, and this new series of releases is replicating those collections, but in perfect-bound paperback editions. His better-known chapbooks were put out every couple of years, and were essentially "best of" collections featuring 10% of the 500 poems composed during a particular 2-year span. Eventually these will likely be pulled together into one volume and re-issued here as well. Brendan has been very active on-line from the very early years of the Web, and has published a good deal of his poetry on his blog, which he began in 2000. This, from time to time, included reading audios of various poems. Due to the large number of pieces involved, this has never been been systematically addressed, but that is an element that is being considered for future development, possibly through a Blog Talk Radio channel, or via YouTube videos. As is evident from even a cursory reading of Tripp's poetry, most of this is dark, brooding, anguished, and fraught with despair. Eventually the process of giving these sorts of inner states a physical form began to take a toll, creating something of a neuro-linguistic feedback loop of increasing morbidity, and around 2004 he took the dramatic step of no longer writing poetry on a regular basis. After having composed so much for so long, this came as quite a shock to Tripp's system, and the various publishing projects that he had in the works (including a web site with three decades' worth of poems) fell by the wayside. It was only in the past year, following his being hired to consult on a book project, that the idea of using one of the now easily-accessible on-demand publishing services (Amazon's "Create Space") came up, and he has begun the major process of developing new editions of these annual collections. While Brendan Tripp has no plans to resume writing poetry, he is quite interested in getting his "life's work" out there, both in print, and eventually in e-books and other media. Tripp lives in Chicago where he is a consulting Marketing Communications pro, and freelance writer. He can be found all over the Internet as "BTRIPP" (except for where he's not).