X =

"Like philosophical thinkers from Aristotle to Woody Allen, Berg ... frets over the unanswerable questions of human existence, metaphorically suggested by the unfinished equation of his latest collection's title. X= records one man's inward search for the meaning of his own life as he approaches old age... Berg's skill and desperate zeal make reading X= a compelling experience." -- Library Journal "[Berg explores] difficulty understanding his aging, his fear of women, and the world's changing economic, racial, and sexual politics. Berg ... dramatizes the speaker's awareness of this difficulty with Zen-like detachment and provides no easy solutions." -- Publishers Weekly "...a beautifully haunting and beautifully produced collection. ... Berg's programme is assisted by the panache of his style, and the bravery of his existential philosophy." --Stride Magazine ADVANCE PRAISE "I can't recall any work (not even Notes from the Underground) given over more to such fierce concentration on and exploration of the self--the wounded, frightened, frantic self. It is, to say the obvious, immensely, harrowingly powerful." -- Theodore Weiss "I can't think of anything in literature that reveals the working of a man's mind as clearly and fully as these poems do... Maybe parts of Emerson's journal come close. Maybe some of the autobiographical passages in Henry Miller's writing. At any rate I am genuinely impressed and moved... Over and over your thoughts strike a sympathetic chord in me." -- Hayden Carruth