David Melnick was born in Illinois in 1938 and was raised in Los Angeles. By the age of seven he had invented a private language, and at thirteen he constructed a semi-private one with a friend. He was educated at the University of Chicago and the University of California at Berkeley, and now lives in San Francisco. His first book, Eclogs, containing poems written in the 1960s, was published in 1972 (Ithaca House). PCOET, written in 1972, was published in 1975 (G.A.W.K.). Men in Aida, Book One (Tuumba, 1983) is the first book of projected poem based on Homer’s Iliad.