MAKING LOVE TO THE MINOR POETS OF CHICAGO

Making Love To The Minor Poets Of Chicago ($25.95; Mar.; 496 pp.; 0-312-20472-8): A madly ambitious tirade posing

as a parable on the vanity of human wishes. Newcomer Conradimagines the consequences that ensue when US regulatory agencies unveil the Yucca Mountain Project, decreeing that all nuclear waste shall henceforth be buried in a specially designed storage facility in the Nevada Desert. Since nuclear waste must remain undisturbed for thousands of years, and with an eye to the potential communications mishaps on the order of Y2K, the officials in charge of the Project commission an artist, a botanist, and an architect to design visual warnings for the site that will be decipherable to future generations, describing the nature of the substances buried there and warning of the dangers to life and limb. But the Project is soon approached by a university professor from Chicago who insists that a literary warning is needed as well. He proceeds to gather together a ragtag collection of poets to produce an epic poem for the site. They squabble among themselves as only poets can in their effort to distill millennia of culture and technology into verse. Wildly over the top, Conrad’s mad vision will inspire either extreme adulation

or utter abhorrence: get ready for a cult.