A tentative structure I’ve divined around Apparition Poems has to do with what seem to be the four most salient themes of the book: the city, the night, sex, and art. The city is usually Philadelphia; New York, Montreal, LA, and Washington also put in appearances. So much of the book was written in the middle of the night, and so many poems are set roughly in “wolf’s hour” dimensions, that the night itself, its vicissitudes, has to be a major motif. Sex I’ve discussed as involving, to use pop culture as a reference point, a James Bond/Marlon Brando protagonist, who is very successful sexually with women but also frequently heartbroken and therefore emotionally vulnerable. Under the aegis of “the art,” I include the meta-poems, character monologues, and the poems which address philosophy and academia. So, that’s how, when you configure the four motifs together, I allow myself to call Apparition Poems an American epic, and an epic in fragments.