Casting Out Nines

"In Casting Out Nines, memories and reflections fuse East and West in a jazz bop a la Kerouac, a sort of "high school haiku." Irreverent, flippant and sparkling poems about friends, school, dating, sex, drinking, partying, music, teachers, joy, sadness and sex evoke all the concerns of teenagers with a mischievious cool. Within the confines of the seventeen syllable form, Richard Stevenson muses on the complicated joys and turbulent difficulties of being a teen, inspired by his own experiences in the early seventies. Reading Casting Out Nines, one imagines a Fast Times at Ridgemont High as scripted by Basho". -- publisher's website.