Well I’m back to my own readings, after being so rudely interrupted by the likes of R.M. Rilke, and his elegies so artfully rendered by Stephen Mitchell.

Loosely Connected Yous is my first book, so be gentle with me, it’s probably not very good poetry. But it’s a lyric sequence that has stuck with me over the years. As simplistic as it is, originality has always been my goal, and these formulations always felt unique to me, sourced from my body in some way, for good or bad.

I took this lyric poetry sequence from my publication “Selected Collected 2009,” and this reading I recorded in a 15th anniversary edition and final recording in April 2024.

I did this as I begin to publish my entire back catalogue, which is extensive. Indeed, it’s hard to know where to start with my work. Therefore, I went ahead and shored up the very beginning, and recovered these poems and formatted them into a handsome new edition.

Perhaps sometime in the future, if demand warrants, I will haul out some of the other sequences from “Selected Collected 2009 by Ignacio Valentore,” such as “Different Kinds of Rains,” “Odes to Water,” and “Because you’re a gd human being!”