I wanted to write more about Nada Gordon's work, I'm so lame in my articulations. I spoke of her writing's density. I find a confluence of energies in her work. a surreal visual quality, if I know what surreal means. and I do, it means intense, odd collisions of elements (because I said so). there's also the sound of common language being hefted into view, with the odd light of considered thought included. that lumpy phrase refers to the ironic yet sincere public voice that we all inherit and get lost in. I read a few of her poems aloud ("Mom, Is This An Interesting Beach?", "Paeonies" ("dionysian useless category trouble again") and others. reading cold, it is hard to choose a tonal path for her poems. or maybe I'm just a slump. it took me several tries with "Mom" before I felt comfortable. not all her poems are such challenges. I get a little lost in her punctuation, but I'm kinda anal about punctuation. the struggle is just to get the ear for her writing's changeableness. and it isn't a struggle, it's a matter of practice. I haven't read enough of her work, nor heard her read. I need more NGbooks. V.IMP is too pretty to mark up (good paper, well bound) so I haven't got the lines marked that I liked. the reading experience includes sudden finds ("you and your ladylike insomnia"), that make you jump or laugh or just say whoa! as I said previously, her poems written around 9/11 distracted me, as I got thinking of the events of that day. when I moved from a hey something's going on hint from the radio to amazing visual on tv, the 1st thing I saw was a tape loop of the 2nd plane hitting WTC. with Peter Jennings chattering about something else, the picture simply seemed cinematic, even tho I grokked the sitch. I mean, shades of "Independence Day" spectacle. whereas those in NYC were dealing with something much more visceral and immediate. Nada's poems, written around the event, are courageous and personal, different from what I, safely nigh Boston, could possibly produce at that time. it is remarkable to think there is language left, that Nada could situate the writing at that time. "I didn't know it was a subject". I'm not reviewing her work here, but accomodating the energy felt and received. I'd like to see more commentary that rises above captioning the new stuff, but instead does a little muscular work. there's a task for Tributary, if I'm up to it. Gould and Gordon are on my list of poets to watch, in terms of oeuvre, not just the spankingnew pome arriving in the latest ish of WHATEVER.