An experiment in lyrical fiction, The Passion of Valentino Santi is the first-hand account of a material and spiritual wasteland existent in the present age. Through a mix of purple prose and stark verse that unapologetically and violently assaults the senses, a poet-scribe, Valentino Santi, chronicles the wasteland’s advent, reign, and eventual demise. And he identifies correctly its cause and boldly names names. “We Didn’t Feed Love • And It Went Away • And When Love Went Away The Water Went With It •,” he declares. Skillfully weaving ideas from differing sources, including The Vedas, The Epic of Gilgamesh, the life of Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald, the film Taxi Driver, The Jonestown Massacre, Joseph Campbell, the Christian Bible, and Jungian Psychology, The Passion of Valentino Santi is a gritty treatment of the wasteland motif as well as an uncompromising commentary on modern society. "Priest writes in a lyrical voice that's full of evocative imagery in a wide range of registers . . . Readers will find here a captivating vision painted on the broadest of canvases." - Kirkus Reviews Dé Avery La Monte Priest is a Minnesota writer, mythologist, and teacher with a great fondness for DC comic books, the Minnesota Vikings, and PRINCE. A reader of tarot cards and dice, he is a devotee of C.G. Jung, Hermann Hesse, and Joseph Campbell. He also enjoys dancing and running on treadmills. He is the author of Salt of the Dancer: Selected Verse and The Passion of Valentino Santi.