Shiny Pencils at the Edge of Things
New and Selected Poems
by Dick Gallup

Simultaneously elegant and goofy, the poems in Shiny Pencils at the Edge of Things depict the quiet moments of life with sophisticated wit and a child's sense of wonder. Gallup's poems often begin with household objects, or a walk down the street, but his lines leap across continents and ideas with ease.

The rhythmic nature of poetry is to give
repeatable replications of the patterns of thought
     Poets notoriously get pleasure from thinking about anything
           what began as a magical way of getting people to listen to you
giving them pleasure almost before the words are introduced
becomes a form of very elegant "barking"

In the late 1950s, three poets and an artist became close friends in Tulsa, Oklahoma: Ted Berrigan, Ron Padgett, Dick Gallup, and Joe Brainard. All four moved to New York in the early 1960s, and along with Anne Waldman, Lewis Warsh, Michael Brownstein, Alice Notley, Bernadette Mayer, and Tom Clark, they became the second generation of the New York School Poets. Shiny Pencils at the Edge of Things is a major collection by a key figure in this lively group of writers.