Of Letters and a Man: A is the first canto of a projected 26-canto epic. It begins with the appearance of the Poet/Anti-Poet, who invokes Cadmus the Phoenician, father of letters and literature, and announces his intention to narrate the life of a man he calls the Hero/Zero. Following this prologue, the Hero/Zero, who also identifies with Cadmus, declares that he will narrate his own life in a work he calls I Am the Book I Write. Conceived on the grand scale of Homer, Virgil, Dante, and Milton, informed by the idiosyncrasies of Proust, Joyce, Beckett, and Borges, Of Letters and a Man: A marks a revival of the epic tradition.