S.P. Somtow flogs a dead horse to life in this astonishing collection of sonnets. Horror and humor, pathos and putridity, the sublime, the subliminal, and the sublimated all blend together in this tour-de-force of madcap invention. Exposing the human condition in all its gritty nastiness and unwitting comedy, this book is the first collection of S.P. Somtow's poetry since the pretentious outpourings of his adolescent years. "There's life in this art form," he says, "plenty of life. as long as you're willing to dive headlong into the maelstrom of our insane twenty-first century existence." His subject matter comes from the tabloids: serial killers, sex scandals, mass murderers, and hate crimes. Distilled into the severe discipline of the sonnet form, these tawdry subjects find a new resonance, and new relevance, and we recognize in ourselves a continuity with our own past.