This book won our Fence Modern Poets Series back in, oh, 2005 I guess it was (published in 2006), and by my calculations probably only about 300 people have ever actually held it in their hands (including shippers and handlers). One hundred fifty copies have been sold by our distributor as of the most recent sales report, and probably about twenty directly from our office. Several copies sold way back in 2005 at the first reading for the book, which took place at the KGB bar in NYC. Daniel Brenner, the book’s author, read with the wonderful Tracey McTague, and I well remember several audience members, there for Tracey, approaching me after the reading saying things like “Where did you find this guy? He’s amazing!” and then buying the book. I had hoped that this was a harbinger, that a kind of slow burn of discovery would spread across the poetry reading population, and I would have the pleasure of saying to many, as I said to those audience members, that “I found this guy in the pile of entries to the Fence Modern Poets Series,” but so far this has not happened. There’s been quite a lot of silence around this book. So I would instead urge many of you who are entering the Fence Modern Poets Series this year to pick up a copy of The Stupefying Flashbulbs, if not in curiosity then in solidarity with one who was in your position of hopefulness just three years ago. He won the contest and his book was published. Ta da!

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