Poetry for the after-hours, later than the night. With "Smoke Rings", John Pietaro, a writer whose work is impassioned with the literature of rebellion, the heritage of noir and the urbanity downtown, presents his debut chapbook, a terse, dark and sometimes satirical homage to New York at night. "Smoke Rings" encompasses the edge of the city's creative tapestry, its free jazz, punk culture, radical verse, bold performance and revolutionary politics casting the vision. Plainly put, here's a collection of works from just beneath the underground.


CONTENTS: Haze/5:03AM (for Steve Dalachinsky)/Discreet Foundlings of Quiet Places (for the Velvet Underground)/Blue (for Miles)/Dancing to Incessant June (for Bern Nix)/The People of Night/Impressions (for Coltrane)/Langston/Sonic Incursion/Robert Quine on the Rocks/The Lonely (for Ornette)/Conjured and Cast (for Kenneth Fearing)/Burroughs Inferno/Now's the Time That Wasn't/Chordal Clouds & Whispers (for Ran Blake)/The Late-Night Breakfast Special