One of the major language poets (and now an ardent poetry blogger), Silliman has previously referred to his poem Albany
, published in 1981, as his autobiography. Here he uses the spare sentences of that language-era work as starting points for yet another round of self-fashioning. The book closes with the sentence "It is not possible to 'describe a life,' "; what Silliman gives us is not descriptions of the antiwar protests of the late '60s, his various living arrangements or childhood in working-class California, but the infinitely branching chains of event and idea of which a life is composed. When Silliman notes that the first lines of Ketjak
were inspired by a performance of Steve Reich's Drumming
or explains that his work in the prison reform movement has taught him "the sense of time as urgency without future," he does so in a manner, wonderfully particular to his work, that shows how process makes the person. Having recently completed his 26-volume (!) poem The Alphabet
, this telescoping of life into language and then of language into further sentential florescence seems particularly appropriate. Under a sign of his own making, Silliman offers a brilliantly readable portrait of his poetics and of the places and times of his life. (Apr.)
