With Seven on Style, William Wantling, the bad boy of the Beat periphery, finally gains control of his work--and seemingly his life. The book is couched, loosely, as a college English syllabus (Not unlike Lew Welch's hilarious and luminous Courses). Written in the last year of his life, and published just after his death, Style is a witty, unsparing look at teaching, poetry, writers (Style 3 features a wonderful insight into the curious relationship between William Wantling and Charles Bukowski--complete with an actual letter fo Bukowski excoriating Wantling for his failure as a poet since becoming a teacher), and the vicissitudes of the writing life. Wantling as teacher? Wonderful! Would loved to have taken a class with him. That's not possible, but this book brings it close.--Kevin Jones

With its bilious yellow and blue cover, and illustratons featuring a mushroom cloud and an undeniably dyspepsic-looking William Wantling, Sick Fly is one of the most off-putting looking books I've ever encountered. Inside, however, are some of the best and worst poems of William Wantling's all-too-short career. "[W]e found the park all right," "It was Tuesday Morning," and "Once you've been a dopefiend" are grim, brutal, even often vulgar--yet hauntingly powerful glimpses into the poet's tortured soul and his life. Less successful are works such as "Hymn," and "Antiphon." Written during the poet's years at San Quentin, they derive, it appears, from too much Swinburne consumed too quickly and digested too little. Still, there is no such thing as TRULY bad Wantling, and those interested in what was happening at the fringes of what was left of the Beats around 1970 could certainly do worse than search out this book.--Kevin Jones

William Wantling (1933-1974), sometimes called the last Beat and the last true hipster, lived a poet's life, a criminal's life, a Marine's life, an addict's life: really more lives than most people get. But for all of his excesses, he was able to chronicle the content of his tortured soul in his writing, primarily through his poetry. He lived fast, died young (yes, he admired James Dean, hung out with Charles Bukowski), and unfortunately published in mostly ephemeral, evanescent forms. John Pyros has preserved some of Wantlings best work in a number of the genres he attempted. The fact that the work is in print after so many years attests to Wantling's talent as a writer, and to John Pyros and Spoon River Press for their faith in a writer who--unjustifiably--would have fallen through the cracks.