A set of lyric experiments whose music and mutable syntax explore the social relations concealed in material things. It measures the 'vague cadence' of daily life, testing both the value and limits of art in a time of vanishing publics and permanent war.
"Ambitious and highly self-conscious poems. . . . If O'Brien's poems are becoming increasingly resistant to, if not combative with, their readers, their rewards are also growing richer for readers willing to engage in the poems' arguments."
