A bedroom occupation : love elegies /

"Tricky language about the sticky stuff: this is bedroom-and-beyond talk from the past master, the rake, the raider, the witty and lonely rider. Enjoy here a bard's bodywork, least love's locutions. You have never read such confessions. John Donne, meet Mark Scott."--Alicia Ostriker

"Mark Scott is one of our finest American poets. And here is, I think, his most challenging work. From the first sentence of A Bedroom Occupation we are taken by a voice that is unsentimental and unafraid of the dark on a nighttime tour of solitude."--Richard Rodriguez

Untangling the aftermath of gratified desire, Mark Scott's melancholy, letter-like poems are not always easy, not always pleasant, but you'll read him wide-eyed, laughing, identifying with the characters and the situations--unless you've never had lovers or friends:

Lewis, you tell me not to choose my freedom, a desolate heart, but to remain in delight
                with one woman. Too late; I moved out; I can't retrieve
that message where you sent it: Lauren changed our code. And if I could, why should
                what works for our friend work for me? He seems happy,
says he's comfortable (which reminds him he doesn't have "the fuck-you money yet").
                And he's consistent, stable. But his waters don't run deep.
Mine do--or so I've been told. "If that's how you feel," Lauren said, "you'd better
                move out."

Mark Scott , author of Tactile Values, has appeared in The Paris Review, Poetry, The Kenyon Review, and The Poetry Anthology, 1912-2002: Ninety Years of America's Most Distinguished Verse Magazine. He lives in Omaha, Nebraska, where he teaches at the College of Saint Mary.