I was reading ‘Still Lives’. I think I can easily identify what is being written about. E.g. ‘A grammar of don’ts’ seems to be about prison life, ‘A cityscape’ some exotic ruins. I can maybe identify a theme/mood of a “crushing finite” (just a phrase that stood out to me). The poems seem to be directly influenced by Prynne (especially visually) and Ed Dorn, as if he were using the latter to undermine the impulse of the former (“‘Shoot into the foot, I say, and only then into the air.'”): I had the sense of the line trying to escape its energy.
What’s puzzling me about them is less what any phrase means (“These favours of abstraction are spun out”: what good was Rimbaud in the Paris Commune… “This is a felt suit in an immaculate glove”: the texture of revolt is what matters) than how they combine.
I cannot easily see what is a fragment, let alone how they combine. I have a similar problem in Pound’s cantos (I’ve read some), though at least there I’m clear that they combine as analogies or disanalogies.
Is it just text here, lines? If so, these read like gentle (e.g. an ironic laurel “wreath”) lyric poems looking for rest.
Either that, or read them for their moments of hope.