0.174: The Complete Numbers Cycle

Poetry. Gordon Massman's 0.174: THE COMPLETE NUMBERS CYCLE is an intricate exposure of the self. In this 20 years' culmination of work, he has dared to make the invisible visible. Perhaps on some level a perverse project, 0.174 lays open in depth-confession, in laboratory precision Massman's innermost fantasies, obsessions, urges, and fears which might, he hopes, provide at least a splintered reflection into one's own humanity. In either case—whether private or universal—here opens an increasingly cathartic examination of Massman's particular psychology observed as acutely and honestly as he is capable. In so doing he has treated what mainstream society generally considers vulgar or unsavory, as valuable and often beautiful. It is his hope that some who attempt this book will agree that all human thought and feeling is worthy of song. Often satirical in tone, this book represents the nekyia, the down, inward going, of an epic tale that is life itself.

Gordon Massman was born in 1949, in Corpus Christi, Texas, and attended the University of Texas–Austin, and the University of Alaska–Fairbanks. For twenty-five years he acquired scholarly and trade books in the social sciences and humanities for various scholarly and commercial publishers including The University of Wisconsin Press and Westview Press. He now teaches writing and literature at The Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts in North Adams, Massachusetts, and lives in Plainfield, Massachusetts.