Part memoir, part how-to, all Baxter Black, Lessons from a Desperado Poet is a humorous, witty take on making a living by doing the right thing and trying everything. According to Black--who provides 118 life lessons through the course of the book--success, at least in the form to be had by working outside the system, "does not take a genius; it just requires the persistence of a glacier. . . . Remember, often it is not ability, it's reliability. The world is run by those who show up."A mind-tickling romp through the formation, fermentation, and fruition of the author's career as a poet in a country where publishing poetry is "practically illegal," Lessons from a Desperado Poet is instructional for the entrepreneur, inspirational for the ambitious, and entertaining for the teeming masses. In three sections--"How I Learned,""What I Learned," and "Why I Was Able to Learn"--the man the New York Times called "probably the nation's most successful living poet" takes us through everything from his "Basque Infusion" (i.e., the lessons he learned working for a hard-headed Basque) and how he became a self-sustaining poet, to such chapters as "Me and NPR," "How to Control Your Tech Addiction," and "Controlling Your Own Life--Big Decisions Like Turning Down Johnny Carson." Since it is also a story of continuously overcoming the odds, Lessons from a Desperado Poet leaves a trail of self-improvement and motivational tortilla crumbs that readers will follow with delight--before, that is, squirreling them away in their own cerebral pockets for later use.