Perhaps the most romanticized figure in the world is the male war correspondent. Scruffy, haunted, he walks the wreckage alone in battered—but good—European shoes. He smokes (if he’s not American). He has trouble with commitment. Yet his female counterpart cuts a different profile. At his age, she’ll seem leathery and lonely. It’s better that she doesn’t smoke.

Students of publishing lore know that Andrew Wylie used to be a poet, but few have had the chance to peruse Yellow Flowers, a 1972 chapbook that collects some of the vaguely Mephistophelian superagent’s youthful versifications. “There’s a rumor that he has tried to buy up all of the copies,” says literary agent Ira Silverberg. It’s easy to see why: Thumbing through Silverberg’s copy of Yellow Flowers, one can only imagine what a Wylie client like, say, Benazir Bhutto would make of such poems as “Hands up Your Skirt,” “Warm, Wet Pants,” and the determinedly unlyric “I Fuck Your Ass,