I dropped out of UC Berkeley in 1971 and moved to a commune in Somerville, MA. I worked in a garbage can factory and went around town doing a lot of poetry readings. My favorite place was Stone Soup Gallery on Cambridge Street. I met one of my idols, John Wieners, there, and he liked my stuff. Jack Powers, the gallery owner, told me he would publish my book if I financed it. He did the collage for the covers and must be held responsible for the erroneous possessive apostrophe in the title (ah, bless 'm!). I should also explain that Lawrence used to be my first name and Ivan my middle name, but I reversed them, legally. So anyway I was in my early twenties when these poems were written.
INDEX: Poems excerpted from Raw Scorpions (Stone Soup Press, 1972)