also reading Blue Book by Steve Benson (The Figures/Roof 1988). I don't know much about him, have only one other book of his. he gives detailed description of the provenance of each work. Jackson Mac Low often does a similar thing, and it's not just useful in a Paris Review way, how the author works, these notes on process seem part of the work itself. I like this bit concerning the piece "Blue Books". which was/were written in those blue examination booklets you face in school. he recalls how these blue books would excite him creatively. "I used to get unembarrasedly absorbed in pursuing trains of thought along the paths of spaced-out, pale blue lines on those fields of cheap white, often recycled paper. To me, it was a crapshoot whether the TA or professor would later upbraid me for my ignorance and self-indulgence, admire my expansiveness and subtlety or just puzzle irritably over my chamelonic shifts of argument and handwriting. Whether I'd studied a lot or not at all, the passing out of the blue books was the occasion for a blankly, secularly devil-may-care and almost awestruck acquiesence, as I couldn't guess in advance what structure or insights would inform my argument, by what abjectness and astonishment I could expect to site [sic?] my remarks." which just sounds jolly fun and adventurous. picture of him on back cover, tiny b&w, him in shaded doorway. uh, hi.