Co-op available. Nearly all of the poems in Power Ballads have been previously published, but mostly in underground journals and zines. The rest we'll be pitching to The Believer, Poetry, and The Brooklyn Rail. Caples will self-promote on the City Lights blog, http://www.blogcitylights.com.

A power ballad was a hair metal band's voyage into the softer side of rock, compromising to the integrity of the genre, but genuine and trailblazing. So too is Caples' Power Ballads. His poems and prose pieces are bizarre and hilarious, in which Dylan and Bowie sit alongside the French surrealists, with the occasional turn into heartfelt romanticism.