Carl Martin, of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, was unknown when he submitted an unsolicited manuscript to the Arion Press. We recognized Martin's exceptional talent and published his first collection of poems. Gilbert Sorrentino, the Stanford University novelist and critic, has written of Carl Martin: "He is possessed of poetic genius. The things he can do with language, a medium which he clearly loves and thoroughly distrusts, are astonishing." The poet and critic John Hollander of Yale University writes: "Carl Martin's poetry is highly unusual. I find his originality of diction to be most impressive and his revision of surrealist agendas to be most imaginatively compelling." The poet John Ashbery wrote, "Carl Martin's poetry bears the same relation to contemporary writing that Conlon Nancarrow's player piano studies do to traditional piano music. In other words, it's unlike anything you've ever read and will take you to places you never knew existed."