As part of a collaboration between the UC Davis graduate programs in Music and Creative Writing, Scott Hunter showed me his poems scented candles. Reading them was a fantastic hoot! Hunter's impeccably constructed texts were conceived with the intention of being read by an online simulated voice that was purposefully archaic in its delivery – glitchy, devoid of tone or context, flat and relentlessly even in the rendering. The three poems of Hunter's that are set here mostly operate in an outdoor environment or inside the ethos of late night. Half-awake awareness of the mundane or specific momentary happenings, with moments of jolting revelation brought about by self-soothing pot smoking, are part of the very common experience of late night rambles through a quiet neighborhood when one gets to be alone with themselves, their past, and their dog, as part of a nocturnal ritual where the present slowly melts away as one readies for slumber.
