Pearl is one episode in a longer poetic project, The Crimson Hexagon, a sweeping cultural epic for the 21st century. In a variation on the tradition of Browning or Pound's Personae, and approaching Ferdinand Pessoa's art of the pseudonym, The Crimson Hexagon develops distinct writerly identities into a series of 'selections' from fantastic, non-existent works. In this context, Sharks' is the voice that bursts forth with the greatest ferocity, fully formed, as it were, from Zeus's forehead. Pearl is an important poem, and Lee Sharks is destined to stick around for awhile. -JOHANNES SIGIL, author of The Tao Te Ching of Reading