Cogswell has been writing non-poetry for The Stranger for more than a decade. His quixotic run for city council has now been immortalized by the movie Grassroots, directed by Stephen Gyllenhaal, father of some famous kids and a poet himself. In a turnabout of sorts, Gyllenhaal is "opening" for Cogswell tonight. If you've seen Grassroots—it played closing night of SIFF—you have slightly cartoonish sense of Cogswell's life, but you probably don't have a handle on what a good writer he is. Matthew Stadler, who published this book through Publication Studio, describes the book like this: "One of the few successful attempts to drag Whitman out to our remote coast and make him live in a dirty downtown hotel."

Cogswell reads tonight at Naked City Brewery & Taphouse, 8564 Greenwood Avenue North, at 7 pm. It's free. His latest essay for The Stranger appears in tomorrow's issue. It's about a very terrifying road trip.