"a lovely and familiar gravity"

I'd picked up 'Sense Record' a while ago and didn't really 'click' with the poems. A few days ago I was led back to Jennifer Moxley's work while looking for material on Rosmarie Waldrop. (There's an account of the "Waldrop effect" at www.asu.edu/pipercwcenter/how2journal/ archive/online_archive/v1_8_2002/current/readings/moxley.htm ). This time it was 'Imagination Verses' and - for whatever reason - the poems seemed to be speaking differently. How often this happens.

Here are some initial reactions:

i) Moxley exploits the possiblities of line spacing, allowing an individual line its own breathing space. It possesses its own grammar and cadence and thus can stand alone. It would be interesting to re-space a poem and see how the sense would become claustrophobic. Open it up even further & the thread would be snapped.

ii) And line spacing is itself a grammatical tool - kind of an invisible comma - allowing the lines to make sense 'apart' (often as quick images) while also having the potential to carry on sense/qualify the preceding statement.

iii) Concrete nouns work as abstracts while also working physically or evoke 'scenery'. (cf "buildings", "range", "journey" in 'Home World').

iv) Entire poems can work at the level of allusion - there seem to be many 'unspoken' contexts to the poems both personal and literary. (Here I can see possible connections to Rosmarie Waldrop's use of unattributed citations in her work - how many of Moxley's poems are embedding lines? The 'Duets' are the more self-advertised examples).

v) Deliberate clashing of frames of reference: the rural & the financial in 'Home World' for example. However, you could argue this is a false opposition given modern 'agri-business'. I'm reminded of Prynne-like delight in 'torque-ing' a word for its material potential.

vi) The use of "I" as a threading device: the "I"'s actions, experiences, dreamings, desirings, disenchantments which it's tempting - but probably mistaken - to identify with the autobiographical "I" of Moxley herself. The "I" is a ruse, almost a little motor to keep the poem running. Here I'm thinking of Lisa Jarnot's poems. And, for that matter, O'Hara.

vii) Related to (iv) an ongoing dialogue with poetic tradition at all levels: explicit statement, setting, diction, imagery, syntax, rhythm and sound. A line such as:

"I dreamt my sense could wend the fight away"

Lush!

viii) Use of rhyme as a 'counter-logic' to the often disjunctive line syntax , sewing the poems together while - inevitably - accepting (inviting?) sounds to produce excess, to go their own way. And I'm picking up subtle effects where she often works off the unstressed syllable or semantically unimportant word. Furthemore, sounds being chimed at quite a distance - by no means within the line or the following. Certainly, a first reading tends to miss the delicacy here. Or at least mine does!

ix) A playfulness - her liking for punning slippages - "world" to "word" in 'Home World', the "apartment of my youthful reveries" in 'From a Distance I Can See', the startling "a broken spine/like any sign of care" at the close of 'Night Train to Domestic Living Arrangements'.

x) Two oppositional landscapes - geographic space (especially seas) and domestic interiors (beds, dishes, house). Here I'm reminded of Peter Gizzi's poems - especially the early volume 'Periplum'.

Well, that's a start. They're lovely poems. 'I am Depressed without Your Pencil too' is a particular favourite.

More to come on Moxley, Waldrop, and - no, I haven't forgotten - Gallup. It all depends on how quickly exam marking goes ... and the sunshine...