OIL / A Brilliant Life

In deciding what to republish of Al Brilliants vast writings, I considered excerpts from his many journals, such as Bus Journal or Bookshop Journal, but I was continually drawn to the slim PAINTBRUSH pamphlet with the even slimmer poem OIL. If not only for its applicable formatting for receipt, then for how the poem encompassingly depicts a life through a single substance, oil, and how that lifethe life of a publishertakes on a mythic quality, subsisting on that lubricating, penetrating, birthing, and protecting substance. This republication includes the biographical essay by alex benedict, A Brilliant Life.

Al Brilliant is born by oil and births books with oil.