The Collected Prose of Carl Rakosi

Jacket design by Arline Thomson with a photo by Burton Hatlen. From the front flap: As the poet approached his 75th birthday, he was asked to meditate about his lifetime as a writer and said: "The test of prose is whether it can escape into metaphor. If it can, it needs purifying. Ordinarily, therefore, I avoid prose, for there is nothing I like better than to escape into a metaphor. But I am also ironic and like to romp, and occasionally, therefore, write prose, which I strive, against my nature, to make atomic and as hard and tight and natural as a hickory nut."