The Milk of Inquiry
Wayne Koestenbaum

More meditative, more provocative than his previous, much-praised work, The Milk of Inquiry is Koestenbaum’s strongest collection to date. Short lyrics that show this opulent writer at his most austere and a long autobiographical poem round out the collection. 

“Koestenbaum puts wordplay at the service of autobiography, and autobiography at the service of a ceaseless inquiry into the origins of woe, the mysteries of sex, and the dialectic of the brain and crotch. This is the top of the milk of that inquiry—la crème de la crème.”
—David Lehman

“Slack, odd and ravishing, Koestenbaum’s poems take spectacular risks... A constantly self-lacerating, curtly erotic and courting of cliche.”
—Pubilsher’s Weekly

Wayne Koestenbaum is the author of two previous books of poetry, Ode to Anna Moffo and the Other Poems and Rhapsodies of a Repeat Offender. His works of cultural criticism include The Queen's Throat: Opera, Homosexuality, and the Mystery of Desire (nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award) and Jackie Under My Skin: Interpreting an Icon. Winner of a Whiting Writer's Award, he is a professor of English at the City University of New York's Graduate School. 

Paperback / $16.50 (Can $22.50) / ISBN 978-0-89255-239-9 / 134 pages / Poetry

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