Inspired by the comments of Ken Rumble, I just re-read My Life and read Chris Vitiello's Nouns Swarm A Verb. It was a very interesting experience to read those two books back to back.
I found Nouns Swarm A Verb much more "self-contained" than My Life. What I mean is the gestures (language) are often more intense IN themselves in _Nouns Swarm A Verb_. The "indefinite continuation of the poem" includes words that do intense "repetition, recombination, and permutation."
I feel like I am bumping around in an freight train or an overhead bin. Bin=to be. Bin equals a storage. Bin equals . . . well anyway. Whereas, in My Life, I must be riding a ship.
Density in different ways. The word swarm and the word body.
Hejinian's "I lapse, hypnotized by the flux and reflux of the waves"
and
Vitiello's "Causality is discovered to be an analogy of allegory."
Nouns Swarm a verb is a "real" war book. A mispro(noun)cement. The stories of dolls(dollars) and eyes. It is unrelenting. It is a much much more intense swarming than Jorie Graham's attempt to Swarm. While reading Nouns Swarm a Verb, I felt communication vital and elusive. I realized the limitations of like. As in: "the words were like a draft of shadows." I questioned the tricks of language only to realize I leave one trick for another. But perhaps multi-tricks enable seeing a little more really. I go back. I rethink.
Yes, I am a train in Nouns Swarm a Verb, but the train isn't really self-contained. That's just another trick of language.
Nouns Swarm A Verb avoids the disease of analysis but begs for it.
WhOOOO. Did I channel a blurb in that last sentence?
A blurb is sketchy because it contains catch phrases. How many catch phrases are above? Let's see, there's no (sit u ate) there's no hm...
A blurb needs a dollar and I am not fishing for dollars so the above can't be a blurb. Maybe blurbs and blogs are from the same kingdom.
I'll have to google that.
Blurbs and blogs and burgs and burps.