Rational Numbers

In his second book of poetry, the winner of the 2000 T. S. Eliot Prize, H. L. Hix uses two contrasting poetic sequences. "Orders of Magnitude" defies rationality in favor of invention in the musical sense: producing a short composition that works out a single idea. As in music, the whole composition achieves its irrational effect through rational formal structure, with 100 poems, each ten lines long, with ten syllables per line. In the second sequence, "Figures," the speakers follow their "pure" rationality, though it leads them, inevitably, into the dark heart of the irrational.