Xing is a part of Ron Silliman's large work, now completed, The Alphabet. In it, in a manner not entirely unrelated to that employed by Nicholson Baker in his early novels, he chronicles a life—it's hard not to think of it as Silliman's life—in language that is inventive, surprising, and funny. Something I've noticed about the way I read Silliman's poetry is that, though I've been called the slowest poetry reader in the world, for some reason, I am compelled to consume it quickly, reveling as I go in the torrent of details thus created in my mind. I should stress, too, that in the surprising enjambments, the manner in which we are suddenly forced to do, as we move from one stanza to the next, conceptual 360s, Silliman's work is very, very funny, and also, often, intensely moving. Hear Silliman read some of Xing here:
http://ron-silliman-xing-mp3-download.kohit.net/_/38509
