Told partly through imaginary conversations with Marcel Duchamp, Porno Diva Numero Uno is a semi-autobigraphical and sexually explicit exploration of the relationship of art to existence, written in the lost form of 'single transmission' which originated during the transition between Greek dramatic lyric and lyric drama, and in the transformations of the tragic chorus. Using little or no punctuation, this unusual prose style causes the meanings of any given 'sentence' to overflow into surrounding phrases and images creating new associations which magnify the metaphorical power of language. The resulting work is lyrical, witty and iconoclastic The protagonists weave a series of dream-like meditations which soar and dip from the sublime and transcendental to the bathetic and everyday.

"Porno Diva is a book of desperate longing disguised by bravado, whimsy and wild intelligence. B. (Berg) creates a labyrinth for our age as K. (Kafka) did for his. It is deeply and joyously original."

"In the aftermath of avant-gardes, Flesh is the extreme to which our words, aching for tenderness, struggle to return. Porno Diva Numero Uno is a magnificent transmission of this struggle, an agon of recaptured otherness. Its accomplishment is nothing less than a new Mortalism which Stephen Berg freely offers to voices — Duchamp's, Van Gogh's, yours and mine — that had almost forgotten how to die, almost forsaken the chance to be reborn."

"By turns edgy, ecstatic, self-doubting, rapturous, transgressive, all-forgiving, Steve Berg's imaginary encounters with Marcel Duchamp catch the flesh and blood adrenalin rush of fevered consciousness, its fork-tongued polyphonies, heart-breakingly honest & vulnerable 'inner human music,' its porno peep show sadnesses & hidden delights: 'the hole...in the wall in the woman in the amazed self' where 'we have pockets now into wings the wings are inside singing of that place beyond the heavens' — 'the song of eros the unheard never ending song.'"

"From Joyce to Morrison the great accomplishment of the 20th Century was to establish what a Writer is. Not many are left, but Berg is squarely among them. This book represents the essence of what a conscientious and writerly imagination must do. To have it in print at last is a blessing for us all."

"Porno Diva teems with Stephen Berg's trademark acuity and whipsawed tenderness. This rhythmically propulsive, improvised encounter with the great subversive, Duchamp, returns the reader to the undirected now in which we all exist — "life grows stranger more beautiful scarier but the taste of each instant's full of itself." Audacious, and moving. All over the place a challenging crazy and wise lifeforce more vivid than a thousand Internet web sites."

Stephen Berg's numerous books of poetry include The Daughters, Grief, With Akhmatova at The Black Gates, In it, New & Selected Poems, Crow with No Mouth: Ikkyu, Oblivion, and Shaving. He attended the University of Pennsylvania, Boston University (where he studied with Robert Lowell and worked as a banquet waiter) and the State University of Iowa. From 1959-61 he and his wife lived in Mexico City. He has taught at Temple University, Princeton, Haverford and Loyola (Baltimore), and is Professor of English at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia. Berg has been awarded Rockefeller, Guggenheim, NEA, Pew, Dietrich and Ford fellowships and was commissioned by the The Fairmont Park Art Association in 1991 to collaborate with painter Tom Chimes on the public art project Sleeping Woman, a 1200' long line glazed atop the stone retaining wall along the Schuylkill River. In 1972 Berg founded The American Poetry Review and since then has been one of its editors. He teaches at The University of The Arts and has published essays on the contemporary artists Sidney Goodman, Tom Chimes, Toshiko Takaezu and Rudi Staffel.