Intellectuals are often criticized for using big words where small ones will do. In Baltimore, there was a scene of poets who believed that writers shd ONLY use words that the 'Ordinary Joe' uses. They loved Bukowski. Personally, I don't like Bukowski much at all - debased humanity is a problem not a quality. & the reduction of vocabulary to a few hundred words is extremely oppressive to me.

So, "Signage": Davies cd've called the bk "Signs" but wd it really've been the same thing? IMO, NO WORDS ARE COMPLETELY SYNONYMOUS. Every word has its own unique qualities, its own etymology, its own pronunciation, its own feel. I like to use the word "persnickety" - I much prefer it to "picky". Its multisyllabicness is more fun for me, more evocative of.. persnicketiness. I like its "marminess". So, "Signage". This might be Davies' bk of literary criticism, of poetic theory.

"PURSUE VERITABLE SIMPLES": "the function of criticism, and particularly of book reviews, are infatuated with, and activated by, a past. Criticism sells the book ("pushing the book"), it sells criticism, it sells two authors." But, then, later, "Criticism abandons its book-selling function without abandoning the book".

"LIES": "Truth is lies that have hardened."

"The Indeterminate Interval: From History to Blur" (coauthored w/ Nick Piombino): This starts off w/ a lengthy quote from a New York Times article & a chart from the same re voltage measurements from the brain vis a vis reading nonsense. Heisenberg, Mallarmé, Bateson, Freud, Satie, Duchamp, Debussy, Ravel..

"notes for CONSTRUCTION": "Poems have to be constructed architecturally. That is, clusters of words and pieces of the poem must work to support other sections." Even though I'm deliberately twisting Alan's words, this helps justify in my mind a previous review I wrote about his "NAME": "I feel like I walk on these bks, I walk on the middle star of the ratings, as if the writing's a wall".

The theory of this bk is so serious & so diverse & thorough from section to section that I become eager to move onto his next bk, to review it, to find what new challenges it presents me.

At times, the text seems extremely assertive: "An enigma cannot be plural; it depends upon its indistributability. If it becomes dispersed in the text, if it is acted, its character is delineated in diffusion; of necessity, its still factness is destroyed." But what is the title under wch this apparent assertion occurs? "Private Enigma in the Opened Text". Is the privateness a stance unseen no matter how far the text opens?

Much of the theory here seems to concentrate on criticism of criticism. "CLOSE READING CLOSE READING": "A close reading is a reading made from within the mind of the person who wrote what is being read." Later, "A dissection of a text is not a close reading of it." "The dissection of a text is the activity of a shallow, overactive mind." In "ESSAI A CLEF" he writes about Roland Barthes: "It is his contribution, initialled by his perseverance, to discern that it is a failure of critical writing to view its task as the reading of a text; excellent critical, attentive, writing knows its task to be the reading of the writing of a text." My selection here cd be called a dissection.

Alan responds to Ron Silliman's "The Chinese Notebook": "155. You wrote "As always, the intention of the creator defines the state in which the work is most wholly itself" because you wanted to build up a great deal of certainty, some certainties which you hoped to link by their proximity, to make it be true." Another seemingly strong assertion. Cd Alan be doing the same thing?

I give this a 4 star rating even though I liked the 2 bks by Alan that I've already attempted to review more ("Active 24 Hours" & "NAME") & gave them 3 star ratings. So much for the ratings. This bk is EXHAUSTIVE, a labyrinth of permutations of relations between speech & language & text & truth (& so on). ( )