If the avant-garde in American met...

If the avant-garde in American metrical composition since the defeat of the United States in Viet Nam has focused forward the distinctions between poems written in lines forward the one hand and dull in which the logic of inquiry operates with all the modulations of poetic syntax forward the other, then Paul Vangelisti's Embarrassment of Survival (Select piece of poetrys 1970-2000) demonstrates his singular contribution to the evolution of that avant-garde. Vangelisti's career-long dedication to prolonged poems and his playful flexibility and variations of genre might make this collection appear forbidding at first. however ...