Seventeen years in the making, Gordon Massman's The Essential Numbers 1991 - 2008 is the collection that his followers have long awaited, and that new readers will never forget. If you have never read Massman before, think the Walt Whitman of Abu Ghraib and Internet kiddie-porn. Think the lovechild of Baudelaire and the Marquis de Sade. Think Dante's Inferno re-written by its guests. Then realize that no catchy comparisons come close to capturing the scope, intensity, and courage of The Essential Numbers. Simply put, if you have never read Massman before, then you have never encountered anything like these poems.
