THE WEAKLINGS (XL) is Dennis Cooper's first full-length collection of poetry in almost two decades. Although best known nowadays as the author of nine celebrated and controversial novels, including the five novel sequence The George Miles Cycle (1998-2000), The Sluts (2004), and, most recently, The Marbled Swarm (2011), Cooper came to prominence as a poet in the early 1980s. His first collection, Idols (1979), is considered a classic of gay literature, and his second, Tenderness of the Wolves (1981), was nominated for The Los Angeles Times Book Prize. His most recent collection was The Dream Police: Selected Poems 1969-1993 (1994). Cooper's poems have been widely anthologized, including in Post-Modern American Poetry: A Norton Anthology , and were featured in the PBS series The United States of Poetry .