Essay Poems

Poetry. "In constructing this book, I have been thinking about the English language serial poem from Jack Spicer to Lisa Robertson. Some of my poems sustain themselves over considerable lengths. Different forms of superposition insert vertical dimensions into the flow of the text. For H.D. these layers were palimpsestic. For Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari these planes are filaments of desiring production. Other forces form liquid or lubricating layers between associated planes. Meaning appears to be suspended. Disorientation affects development at multiple turnings. If the energy of composition sustains itself, even though as a result of multiplication, a poem may not articulate a satisfying conclusion, still, by other lights, it may feel complete, erotic, nostalgic, melancholic. Some of these poems are translinguistic. Others sacred. Their address to corporeality, raw."—Donald Wellman