Relative Strangeness

A sequence of fragments seems the most appropriate form for a work of this kind introductory surveying essentially personal marked as with all things by my own reading and preoccupations. 'Maybe' Waldrop writes 'the essence of the fragment is that it cuts out explanation an essential act of poetry.' It constitutes Waldrop continues a 'lessening of distinctness of identity.' I do not claim to be comprehensive. Nor do I mean to speak for Waldrop or her work but simply to speak about some of its aspects its various senses of poetics the shifting relationships between theory and practice to draw out a number of examples and to trace certain lines of thinking ways of thinking. - Nikolai Duffy