Leafing through Lucretius' On The Nature of the Universe (trans. Ronald Latham) I stop at the phrase: "cicadas for instance, in summer periodically shed their tubular jackets" (Book IV, Sensation and Sex, p. 132).

Why?

Because I knew I'd read it - or something like it - earlier in the week.

True enough: Peter Gizzi's 'Periplum VI' ("Cicadas for instance shed tubular jackets/periodic of summer") in Periplum and other poems.

Here are some further 'combings' from the same page or general vicinity (Lucretius first, Gizzi second):

1.

I am blazing a trail through pathless tracts of the Muses' Pierian realm, where no foot has ever trod before.

blazing a trail
through pathless tracts

2.

I maintain therefore that replicas or insubstantial shapes of things are thrown off from the surface of objects.

I maintain

insubstantial shapes
thrown from the surface

3.

In the same way our doctrine often seems unpalatable to those who have not sampled it, and the multitude shrink from it.

The same way our doctrine often seems misplaced
and you study chemistry

...

I'm in no way trying to 'expose' Gizzi - the poet 'busted' or the poem 'cracked'.

Rather, in typing the full sentence from Lucretius, I am made very aware of what Gizzi leaves out. To put it another way, the value of what he takes - and arranges in his poem - in some way summons what is left behind. A kind of aching wound which continues to smart. A conversation that continues across the pages and across the ages.

Notice, how example 3. is explicitly concerned with a self-conscious awareness of a way of thinking ("doctrine") and the fortuitous word "sampled". Exactly - the poem's method is there yet excised.

Notice, in example 2, Gizzi excludes "replicas" - exactly what the poem does in its citational procedure. Furthermore, Lucretius' sentence becomes a perfect example of poetic-linguistic theory: writing as a ghostly communication.

Notice, in example 1, the implicit irony when Lucretius' original is revived. Gizzi, the young poet, is - in fact - travelling along Lucretius' lines, stepping into the Epicurean's shoes.

I doubt this discovery is so extraordinary - no doubt someone has published on Gizzi's citational poetics. He, himself, has given his 'mirrorings' in Artificial Heart and - by implication - in his various statements on Jack Spicer. 

I suppose what gives me the shiver - the thrill down the spine - is coming so close to his way of composing. A looking over the shoulder, so to speak. And - who knows - perhaps words themselves give off particles ...