reading My Life as a Lover, by Brandon Brown (the other Brandon?). it is available in pdf format from Detumescence here. the press offers other e-books, and stuff, so go raid, as I will further do. MLaaL has a narrative thrust with embedded poems. as such does indeed resemble Dante's Vita Nuova. BB tries to explain his life as a lover, a matter of intense focus. the poems are all sonnets, which arise from certain situations that he describes. a dry humour pervades: "I began to love my love, and I promise I yielded to love's commands. Shortly thereafter, a warrant for my arrest was issued." this love that he speaks of need not be seen as love. he does not situate any person in this love except for himself. his sonnets are mostly real sonnets, formally made. his syntax is cracked, which plays well against his earnest prose. this is the 1st sonnet:

awed din enemy, not vested, called “we”
came so low, cored me, tentatively man
a quantity feels a shadow, the plan
purloined delicacy copiously.
belly flu more aching drove under knee
my car resting, caved in a loaned annul
keys a doublooned archer press the panel,
a consciousness of solely bitter tree.
he trusted boys’ and girls’ toys suspiring
he cried me Satan’s necklace, saved or tied,
keyed my party speaking to fucked-window.
alarmed apartment desecrated morning,
it comes, pain of the day, kills his becried
case of ugly consumes the tree then sows

the sonnets are all divided, he says, into 2, 3 or 4 parts. you can sometimes see what he means but not always. section XVIII has this sonnet, which he wrote "After returning from vacation":

becalms bedaubs bedims befog
because bedecks befriends begrudged
beclouds bedevils befits bequests
bedews bespeaks betrays befouls
befalls betroths bestirs begets
before begets bereaves belies
belabors belike bemused bewigged
beneath belittles besot bewail
begrimes bewares below bemoan
benumbs begone between bestows
behaves bespoke beheads begin
beguiles between bewildered beholds
belays belauds bestrides betimes
betakes beside bereft berate

this is his explanation: "This sonnet has three parts. In the first part I tell how I encountered Love and how it looked. In the second I relate what I was told. In the third I tell how it vanished. The second part begins: Yet as we met, the third: And then so much."

oop, jokes on me. Williams did this sort of thing as well. I keep reading Brown's love as something, anything, else. or in addition to. he writes in the prose sections with a focused earnestness that recalls Stein. the narrative, you could even say the story, has a 19th century feeling of import, a boding of large scale issues. I'm thinking particularly of Poe, where something of magnitude hovers over all, something barely imaginable (is anything in "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym" imaginable?). a subtle political context comes thru. the prose sections give a most detached plea for love. what the hell is this love and why isn't it attached to anything? can't that be read as ruthlessly politcally? descriptive, that is, of the particular plight assailing the current national scheme? in these prose sections, you could replace love with writing poems, playing hockey, eating sandwiches, invading Iran. such imperative to something that's so poorly defined. this is a rascally, fascinating book. its assertions divert from sense, overawed by a stupid utopian medication. thinking of, say, Bush, or the author of Manliness, who share a like deference to ornate, unmeasured stupidness. Brown's really poking at something important, as unlikely as it might at first seem. I'm not, just to be clear, reading Brown's book as opinion but as poetry. it's not a matter of what he says, but what the language is doing. I can make that distinction.