If one has not already, one should definitely check out Brenda Iijima's new book Around Sea, published by Leslie Scalapino's O books.

The things which separates Brenda's work from the majority of contemporary work which is heavily influenced by the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E movement are her polymathematical interests and emotional palette. Brenda's work is about far more than surface or politics, tackling both Language Poetry's syntactic agenda but also the pre-Language Surrealist and Romantic agendas of the soul and the subconscious, and the transcendent possibilities of language.

The only thing which compares with Brenda's scintillating verse are her scintillating essays. I have recently acquired a beautiful edition of her essay Color and Its Antecedents published by Yen Agat books in Bangkok (available from the author herself, email her (or me and I can get you in touch with her) if you are interested in a copy), which discusses the synesthetic and emotional possibilities in poetry. She draws from a wide swath of texts (from Mallarme to Sarsi indian poems to this author) in presenting a hypothesis that is both enigmatic and intuitive.

Ordinarily I don't have much interest in criticism or theory, but find Brenda's work on said subjects to be as interesting as her poems themselves. From Color and Its Antecedents:

"Color finds itself placed in a poem and in being there immediately becomes antecedent and is found to have antecedent relations within any (every) poem. Color is the lure toward polyphony, becomes polyphony; brings about this condition. Adds always-additional levels/layers of accentuation. After all, color is the elan of the actual; as well, it is oftentimes what space clings to, towards..."