The Man Who Never Was

The Man Who Never Was was a failed TV show from the late Sixties whose protagonist was a spy named Peter Murphy. The poems in The Man Who Never Was borrow the titles of the show’s 19 episodes and explore identities, politics, lies (Sorry, that’s redundant), and personal mythology while shamelessly punning and quoting from Murphy’s Law, The Peter Principle, The Dropkick Murphys and the English post-punk-godfather of Goth, Peter Murphy. If that weren’t enough, the poems test the reader’s patience by alluding to celebrities such as Lance Armstrong, Robert Blake, James Gandolfini, Greta Garbo, Samuel Johnson, Dee Dee Ramone, Jada Pinkett-Smith and others born on the author’s birthday, September 18, as well as Daj Hammarskjöld and Jimi Hendrix who died on that same date. What a mess.