These poems, experiments done over thirty years, test the fluctuating boundary between normal uses of words and compressed, figurative uses. Some of these poems are about people the speaker (not necessarily the writer) has loved, whether happily or unhappily. Others are about what may loosely be called ""dystopias."" These poems do not describe malformed societies but work instead on the level of one individual's sense of things gone wrong beyond his or her own little sphere of twentieth-century American life. Toward the end of the book are some adolescent effusions, not to say ejaculations. Many of these poems are written in free-verse, full of discontinuities and dream images. Many are not rhymed and metered, but instead experiment with the movements of the reading voice as guided by line lengths, typographical spacings, and unconventional punctuation.