“For Lovers of Our Language”: A Review of Bradley Lastname’s Insane in the Quatrain
(the Press of the 3rd Mind, Chicago, Illinois, 2011) I was first introduced to Bradley Lastname through his role as publisher of the early books of Patrick Porter and Robert Pomerhn through Press of the 3rd Mind, books they each sent me for review. This was early in the new millennium, when I was doing a lot of poetry writing, mail art, and corresponding with fertile-field poets like Ric Carfagna, Mark Sonnefeld, Joseph Verilli, and Vernon Frazer. I first experienced Bradley’s writing when I was asked to review the first volume of Letterhead (Highest Hurdle Press, 2007), which was in part a tribute to Harvey Goldner, a mentor of Pomerhn’s. Lastname and his co-editors also produced a second volume of Letterhead, in which some of my own work appeared. Before starting Press of the 3rd Mind in 1985, Lastname published 25 issues of the acclaimed BILE Dadazine dating from 1978 to 1984. In addition to publishing over ten books of poetry and prose, he is a painter, sculptor, and collagist and