Are you a serious poet looking for assistance in analyzing where you are in your poetic career?

Widely published and critically acclaimed poet Luke Breit can help.

With five books and numerous publishing credits in magazines as diverse as The New Yorker and the Haight-Ashbury Literary Review, Luke knows what it takes to get your work in print, to get featured readings and, eventually, to see your work in your own book.

Luke will offer an honest assessment of your work with suggestions on steps you can take to improve; he'll give you an idea of which publications might be open to your work; and he'll advise you on the likelihood of book publication and what you should do to achieve that goal. He'll also be happy to give you ideas on self-publication, a time-honored tradition followed by lesser luminaries than Walt Whitman and Mark Twain.

Luke's books include Celebrating America Within (Golden Mountain Press, 1964); Words The Air Speaks (Wilderness Poetry Press, 1974); In This Picture, We Are Laughing (WUFAHTIBOOTDA Poetry Press, 1978); Messages: New & Selected Poems (QED Press, 1989); and Unintended Lessons (QED Press, 2000). His work has appeared in numerous literary journals including The New Yorker, the Haight Ashbury Literary Review, Zica, Tule Review, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Time and the Mendocino Review. His work has been anthologized in Editor's Choice II: Fiction, Poetry & Art from the U.S. Small Press; California Bicentennial Poets Antholgy, and Landing Signals. He wrote the introduction to the 1988 statewide California Poets in the School anthology, True Wonders and one of his poems graces the entrance to the Folsom Zoo.

He is also a former editor for Harcourt, Brace & Jovanovich and Simon & Schuster. He served as Executive Assistant to the President of Curtis, Brown, Ltd., one of New York's largest literary agencies.

Luke's fee for a written analysis of one manucript of up to 35 pages is $100.

Additional editorial and critical services can be negotiated on individual basis.

"Reading this book is like sliding onto the barstool next to Luke Breit where, 'in the dark confessional of a saloon,' he'll tell you his stories--of parents and children, friends and lovers, of the longing to connect and the ways we sometimes manage it. There's jazz on the jukebox, baseball on TV, and the next round's on Luke." -- Kim Addonizio

"Luke Breit's poems sound with his talking voice, a voice full of compassion, honesty, sensitivity, remembrance, stilled passions and passing life, and somehow all like parts of a novel never written..." --Lawrence Ferlinghetti, former Poet Laureate of San Francisco

"Simplicity is the key to good design. Luke Breit constructs the incredible authenticity of his work into a powerful force by how masterfully he wields that key." --JosČ Montoya, Poet Laureate of Sacramento

"Luke Breit's poems typically leap all over the place. They are somehow like pacing about the house, one room to another -- each room seperate, made for different purposes, but part of the whole, and each holding dear pieces of us. The lover desired or won leaps into the great friend lost by distance or death which blends into the long night writing with brandy in hand becoming a beautiful child or place or simply the moment at which these things most matter, leading to the common discovery that all these are finally the same: parts, rooms, of the house in which his heart lives. He brings the poem back always from whatever source or place of departure to a lovely point, often filled with some deep universal longing, sometimes funny and poignant, sometimes stunningly melancholy and rich, but always always true to who he is as a writer and as a man. It is a house he welcomes us to." --Patrick Grizzell

"Luke Breit's poems fuse his native New York City -- for him, the heart of friendship and love -- with the California feeling of the better world that we are all in the process of creating. In Breit's works, male and female, members of his personal family and friends, all are equal to one another and yet, through his direct and intimate style, maintain their unique otherness. This is his great contribution. Few poets write with a greater sensitivity to equality. That's why you're going to read a book about the future." --Jack Hirschman

"...when have I ever failed to take pleasure in Luke Breit's poetry? (He is) the most reliable poet I know when it comes to making me feel good." --Norman Mailer, winner of the Pulitzer Prize

"In a recent interview, Luke Breit said that good poets work hard, and great poets work harder. Well, Luke works the hardest. Including his work in my magazine, One Dog Press, has been a blessing and a treat." --James Lee Jobe

"Luke Breit's poetry speaks to the reader with tenderness, compassion, insight and honesty. His eloquent and disarming simplicity penetrates to the places that most require a poet's touch to awaken remembrance and stir those longings we had thought (and sometimes hoped) forgotten." --Wisconsin Bookwatch, Feb. 1999