Greg Delanty grew up in a family of printers, and as a youth he worked
in the composing room. A hellbox is the bin into which printers chucked
broken or worn type, and the conceit that unites this collection is the
technology, lore, and tradition of hot-metal printing. Here, the
language of printing--literal and symbolic--inspires a series of moving
and powerful poems.
Delanty writes with an impetuous daring that combines controlled
rhetoric with a vernacular tang, especially in the long title-poem,
which describes his immigration to the United States and his attempt to
deal with feelings of uprootedness in "the continuous sci-fi movie of
our century."