Writing on texts by authors as varied as Gertrude Stein, Niels Bohr, and Mother Goose, Joan Retallack’ s book Procedural Elegies/Western Civ Cont’ d/ disrupts the world of statements with worlds of inquiry. Each poem is an ecologically modeled operation powered by a quasi-systematic principle that is open and ever-changing. "In such a landscape there is no closure; these poems are sites for response, investigation, contemplation and delight." – Jena Osman