The Alphabet / R. Silliman

A seven-pound book of verse that goes down like a cinderblock in a sea of incomprehensibility.  I tried to cultivate a taste for it over a period of weeks, but felt as if I were drowning in an ocean of maple syrup each time I picked it up.  Cf. George Brandes on Anatole France: "France has what he himself calls the French writer's three great qualities—in the first place, lucidity; in the second, lucidity; in the third and last, lucidity."