How to Proceed in the Arts

Poetry. Edith Perloff, who selected this collection for the 2001 National Poetry Series awards, writes of Sullivan's work: "HOW TO PROCEED IN THE ARTS is an amazing tour de force...by turns deeply troubling and breathlessly suspenseful, Sullivan catalogues the splendors and miseries of the young poet-hustler. With a wit whose ancestry includes Petronius, Sei Shonagon and Swift as well as Drucker and Bernstein, his 'takes' on everything from poetic process to poetry's 'place' in a culture saturated with David Bowies and Chers are compact, gritty, severe, even sometimes harsh, but always remarkably fresh and exciting. The result...is terrifying and true, and Sullivan emerges as our most sharply edged 'sociologist of the imagination.'"