a new measure (poetry report)

Gustaf Sobin closes  Breaths’ Burials  stating    whatever utters,  utters nothing, really. and makes of that  nothing —lyric— its  only  measure.   These lines state an indifference towards the personal identity of whatever utters, as well as a hesitancy about  attaching any meaning   to the words said. Whatever utters, utters nothing; what the poem’s words do is give shape (a measure) to nothingness as it passes through.    Throughout  Breaths’ Burials , Sobin (the utterer) does not so much “open himself” or “submit language” to the invisible drift as insouciantly or impersonally frame it in the sounds and letters it happens as, here and now. In “Fourteen Irises for J.L.,” he writes: Just like the poem, which “makes of that / nothing … its / only / measure,” irises arrest an otherwise invisible drift in a “frozen frame.” These irises, like the words, herald no meaning beyond just being there. Irises, words—they are,...