Tales of Gotham City consists of three groups of poems that were written over a period of seven years, from 1977–83. Ian Wedde says of this collection: When I went 'greedily' looking for meaning among the poems I'd written since about 1977, I found the record of a withdrawal of curiosity, its replacement with a counterpart anger. I'd wanted to know why not, not why. I'd heard myself answering kids' questions with my own. There were too many experts. Who did they think they were, these people with such confidence in their cigars, their sex, their history. That's me trying to step out of that sentence. We leave in order to come back. We don't need heroes, we need us.