About the Author

Rob Couteau's work as a literary critic, interviewer, and social commentator has been featured in books such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez's 'Love in the Time of Cholera' by Thomas Fahy, Conversations with Ray Bradbury edited by Steven Aggelis, Ghetto Images in Twentieth-Century American Literature by Tyrone Simpson, and David Cohen's Forgotten Millions, a book about the homeless mentally ill. His published interviews include conversations with Ray Bradbury, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Justin Kaplan, Last Exit to Brooklyn novelist Hubert Selby, Simon & Schuster editor Michael Korda, LSD discoverer Dr. Albert Hofmann, Picasso's model and muse Sylvette David, Nabokov biographer Robert Roper, music producer Danny Goldberg, poet and publisher Ed Foster, and historian Philip Willan, author Puppetmasters: The Political Use of Terrorism in Italy. In his early years as a writer, Couteau won the North American Essay Award, a competition sponsored by the American Humanist Association. His books, including the novel Doctor Pluss, the anthology More Collected Couteau, and the poetry collection The Sleeping Mermaid, have been praised in the Midwest Book Review, Publishers Weekly, and Evergreen Review. His essays and interviews on the Sixties assassinations have been featured at the Kennedys and King website, and he has appeared several times as a guest on Len Osanic's Black Op Radio. Founder of Talisman House, Publishers, and Talisman: A Journal of Contemporary Poetry and Poetics, Ed Foster is one of the most important independent publishers of avant-garde poetry today. A former professor of history and associate dean for administration in the College of Arts and Letters at the Stevens Institute of Technology, Foster was also a Fulbright lecturer at Haceteppe University in Ankara, Turkey, and at the University of Istanbul. The recipient of numerous grants and awards from Columbia University, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Humanities, he is author of over forty books of poetry, criticism, biography, and literary history.

Reviews

"There is a deep tenderness in these words, mingled with the sadness of age. If one goes back to the early poems addressed to Edda Maria Sangrígoli, one can find the tenderness there, too, as it is in his work as a case manager for the poor and homeless. There is much to admire in Couteau's oeuvre, but this tenderness stands out among so many things that make reading his work clearly an important experience."-Ed Foster, publisher of Talisman: A Journal of Contemporary Poetry and Poetics.
"Selected Poems features 101 poems, 40 of which have been printed in numerous print and online journals since 1985. The rest are new to this collection, and represent a satisfying blend of old and new works designed to appeal to newcomers and prior fans alike. Rob Couteau's works are diverse. They follow no set poetic structure, even defying some of them when the muse strikes and special needs indicate that the subject is more important than poetic form.... His inspections of artistic, literary, and social issues are astute and compelling.... Don't anticipate set structures, uniform poetic approaches, or singular subjects here. Selected Poems offers a freewheeling approach to poems and life alike, and is a thought provoking, evocative gathering of works recommended for literary readers not bound by convention or rules." Diane Donovan, Midwest Book Review.