Yoko Ono and Paul McCartney--the two people who probably knew John Lennon's creative process best--offer introductions to this collection of the martyred Beatle's poetry.<BR><BR>A collection of verses, short stories, miscellaneous prose oddments, and many of the author's striking line drawings, John Lennon's IN HIS OWN WRITE was first published in the Beatles' heyday in 1964. For a book by such an iconoclastic author, it owes a lot to the British absurdist comic tradition: the influence of 1950s comedy troupe the Goons, the poet Edward Lear, the writer Lewis Carroll, and the linguistic gymnastics of comic Stanley Unwin (whose work can be found interspersed throughout the Small Faces' OGDEN'S NUT GONE FLAKE album) is very much in evidence throughout. Lennon's acerbic, not to say sadistic, wit is also apparent in skits like "Good Dog Nigel" ("Clever Nigel, jump for joy/Because we are putting you to sleep at three of the clock, Nigel"), and the agile wordplay of pieces like "I Sat Belonely" and "No Flies on Frank." By turns charming and oddly disturbing, IN HIS OWN WRITE is a remarkable glimpse inside the mind of a rock & roll legend at play.