On with the Michael Davidson reading... (Post Hoc

"Subject Matter (a rewrite)"

An allegorical dream narrative in two columns, the right presumably a re-write of the left, adding another layer of complexity to reading experience. A strong presence of a first person-singular. I don't have much to say about this poem.

"Song"

A crowd of people, with an undertone of violence, attend a concert. An air of nervousness. The sound is described in metonymies: "gut / and aperture tuned / around an air, turned / into sound." This poem could be analyzed forever.

"Commentary"

A liminal space, "neither top nor bottom / but in between." The protagonist of the poem is a "grommet maker" in search of health insurance. I know what a grommet is: it's a little metal reinforcement inside of a hole. (I am familiar with grommets in snare drum air holes, though I'm not sure they are found elsewhere.) The grommet maker is a manufacturer of holes, of absences. Yet a grommet is not itself a hole, but something that (partially) fills a hole, makes it more substantial.

"Mixed Aryan"

More Ashberian (although with a political edge) than "language-y," in its hypotactic narrative of racial differences, compared metaphorically to linguistic differentiations. There is some wit: "Later you work for the Weenie king / And learn what goes on in Fairy Land." The rhythms are loosening up now.

***

I am deliberately avoiding value judgments in this commentary. It's not that I am indifferent to them: I do like some poems of this book more than others. I'd prefer to defer my judgment until the very end, so as not to make evaluation an ever-present distracting demand. I think the book has value, or I wouldn't be reading it. Yet Davidson is not a poet I have a personal investment in either.