“The world compels our attentions in familiarly structured ways, so why develop a hyperbolic focus on just one of the structures and compel it to change? to put it his way, of course, reverts to the tool model: poem as utilitarian artifact, communication device, or broadcast transmitter. As poets have commonly remarked (or complained), poetry makes nothing happen. Is the tool, then, dysfunctional? Might it not be the case that this says something, instead, about functionality, attesting to the scope of functional requirements permeating even the deepest levels of subjectivity?”

Jed Rasula, Syncopations