These poems come out of liminal states of dreams from which they are aesthetically composed. Basically, what you see in them comes entirely from you.

Raphael Simons studied composition with and was the teaching assistant of the composer Luciano Berio at Juilliard in New York City. From there, under the name Thomas Simons, he taught the piano at Princeton University and Oberlin College. Fed up with the music business, and with the encouragement of his astrology teacher, Ivy Jacobson, he began writing poetry. He also studied Chinese astrology and fengshui, and wrote three books on fengshui that were published under the name T. Raphael Simons by Random House. Raphael’s poetry was influenced by Benjamin Peret, Tristan Tzara, and Leonora Carrington. His first book of surrealist poetry, Images, was published by La Belle Inutile,