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(From the Introduction) I asked John S. Hall, the author of this book, ""What exactly is a palimpsest? It's one of those words one sees in snooty books, but nowhere else? What made you decide to use it as the title for your book?"" John was silent for a moment, and I realized that he wasn't sure of the meaning either. I saw him attempt to clandestinely look the word up on his phone, but as I saw him, it wasn't all that clandestine. Then I saw that he saw that I saw what he was doing, so he tried (unsuccessfully) to play it off like he knew that I was observing him. ""According to Webster's,"" he said, making overly demonstrative gestures with his phone, ""is 'something having usually diverse layers or aspects apparent beneath the surface.' I knew it had something to do with layers, and I thought it meant a manuscript where you can see text that had been there and rubbed off so that the surface can be reused. I thought of the word when one morning in Oberlin I looked out the window and saw vestiges of footprints in the snow that I had left there the previous night. They had been mostly covered, but were still visible. And the word came to mind, and I wrote a poem, even though I wasn't entirely certain what the word meant. And then I thought it would be a good title for this book because sometimes a book of poetry with a snooty title like 'Palimpsest' is taken more seriously, then say, 'Another Goddamn Beautiful Fucking Beginning, ' which was the title of my last book, which, as far as I know, wasn't taken seriously at all."" John then went on to describe his process: ""I come out with five new poems every weekday, and seven every Saturday, and seven every Sunday. If I stick to that, and so far I have for four years in a row, then each year I'll have come up with (and out with) a little over 2000 poems a year. My goal is 10,000, and I should achieve that by next Fall. I call it The Number Series, because each year I start with Poem No. 1, and then just keep going until the end of December. It's pretty straightforward."" I asked him if he thought that giving his book a serious title like ""Palimpsest"" was meant to indicate that his work was getting more serious, or that he was getting more serious about his work. ""I don't think so. Just last Sunday, five of the seven poems mentioned cocks, simply because I think cocks are funny. One of the poems was about a tree that grows cocks instead of fruit. It was very silly."" ""Yes,"" I replied, ""But you also have a poem about your friend Roger, who died this month, and there seem to be a lot of serious poems this month."" ""I don't think there are more serious poems than usual,"" John replied to my reply, ""And if there are, it's perhaps a coincidence. I think I read once that there are more deaths in December, or in Winter, or something. The days have been getting longer for more than a week, so things are lightening up."" ""I'll tell you,"" John continued, ""There was something magical about those mostly covered up footprints. And the night before, the street lights reflected in the snow and the snow was sparkling. It was absolutely magical. But it was also below zero in Oberlin, so I didn't stop to take a picture. I don't know if you would have seen the sparkling in the photograph anyway. And it's probably just as well, because if I had taken that picture, and if you could see the sparkles in the snow in the picture, then this book might have ended up being called ""Sparkle Snow"" instead of ""Palimpsest,"" and I don't think anyone would have taken that seriously. So I guess everything worked out fine."" I guess I was in something of a mood, because I couldn't think of anything else to ask, and, like most of the introductions to most of the Number Series books, this introduction didn't cover a lot of ground. But it's almost 800 words, and that's something. I think.

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