1st, this bk doesn't necessarily have a clear title. The cover has written on it: 'SCALAPINO/DAVIES", the title page has written on it:

"LESLIE

______

ALAN"

When I 1st saw it I expected it to be a collaboration. Instead it's a very positive reaction to a piece by Scalapino that was used in a dance. This bk was then used "on the occasion of a conference concerning The Work of Leslie Scalapino organized and hosted by Brenda Iijima at the Poetry Project on November 11, 2006".

4 colored inks are used. These colors differentiate contents: Davies' & Scalapino's. The text under scrutiny is named "'Can't' is 'Night'". & Scalapino is very, very lucky to have Davies as the writer to put it under scrutiny. It appears that his analysis is perhaps about 2/3rds as long as Scalapino's poem.

As usual, GoodReads' formatting is not poem-layout friendly. SO, excuse the inaccurate reproduction below:

"If language is only coercion its meaning is never it itself. Its meaning is the job it has for it to do. It is divided - duplicitious - studying itself in action so that next time it can surpass itself in contrived fierceness. What a botched job we've made of even our tongues.

Leslie gives an example the fact of the Kurds that ('we've') courted to fight and dropped them to be, were slaughtered. On one side of the imaginary line

'we'

label them freedom fighters on the line's other side the same

ones 'we' label terror

ists

I suppose it's by labeling them that we'll know on any given day who to kill." ( )