The Book of Immaculate Perception / Madrigals (Paperback or Softback)

The Book of Immaculate Perception / Madrigals is a tête-bêche (flip book) by Marc Zegans and Larry Beckett in which both Madrigals by Beckett and The Book of Immaculate Perception by Zegans read from their respective fronts-to-backs in a single spine format.

The confluence between these paired chaps extends beyond shared narrative lines to independently formed yet common imagery and complementary methods of composition. In each body of work, you will find compactness of speech, form that liberates line, and an easy flow from poem-to-poem that animates and enriches the experience of reading these two sets of poems in each other's company.

Marc Zegans's seven collections of poems include Lyon Street (Bamboo Dart Press, 2022) and The Snow Dead (Červená Barva Press, 2020). Ghost Book (Kite String Press, 2024), a fine art photo book collaboration with photographer Tsar Fedorsky, is held in the special collections of the Boston Athenaeum, the Getty Research Institute, Yale University's Haas Family Arts Library, Haverford College, the Peabody Essex Museum, and others. Marc reviews poetry for Liberated Words in his column, "On the Cutting Edge." Films based on Marc's poems appear regularly at festivals around the world. He lives by the coast in Northern California.

Larry Beckett's poetry ranges from songs to blank sonnets and 100-page narrative works. His lyric, Song to the Siren, is a modern standard. In the years since, he's written the postmodern epic, American Cycle, including the long narratives Paul Bunyan, Wyatt Earp, Amelia Earhart, and he has reinvented Sonnets. The Book of Merlin is a recovery and translation of the 6th-century Brythonic poet, and Romances Without Words / In Solitary is the first translation of the prison manuscript of Paul Verlaine. Beat Poetry is a study of the poets and poetry of the fifties San Francisco renaissance. These madrigals are to a child, from conception on.