Treating subjects from landscape to sculpture to a 19th century technical encyclopedia, the poet is fascinated with light, glass, mirrors, flame, ice, mercury-things transparent, evanescent, impossible to grasp. Likewise Swensen's lyrics, which, with elliptical phrasing and play between visual and aural, change the act of seeing-and reading-offering glimpses of the spirit (or ghost) that enters a poem where the rational process breaks down.
