This spring Clint Margrave edited the posthumous collection Requiem for the Toad: Selected Poems of Gerald Locklin. Locklin (1941-2021) published over a hundred books in his lifetime and Margrave distilled his career into a brilliant and representative 244 pages. Here’s what I wrote for the back cover…

REQUIEM FOR THE TOAD is a gift to iconoclasts everywhere. Irreverent, hilarious, and sometimes downright heartbreaking, Locklin had a voice like no other. Early in the book come these lines: “Do you love me?” I asked./“Love you? How could I love a toad?” And the rest of the book teaches us to do just that. From his musings on everyone from Snoopy to David Hockney, from Ernest Hemingway to the Beach Boys, from Sartre to his friend Bukowski, Locklin gives us zingers about life and mortality. Clint Margrave has assembled one helluva book. Locklin is the toad that never transformed into a stereotypical prince, but kiss these pages and he will be your Prince of Poetry!