Linear C + "The I And The You"

Though she might seem over-shadowed by some of her West Coast peers, such as Rae Armantrout or Kit Robinson, as the "lyric" Language poet, Day—who has been wary of such group associations—has amassed a body of exquisitely constructed poems and longer sequences over the past two decades that have long deserved a greater reputation. She has continued to expand her range in such books as 1998's The Literal World, with its variable stanza patterns that can resemble at times Williams' late improvisations, while not straying far from a miniaturist's eye to visual and social details.

Linear C first appeared as a Tuumba chapbook (part of the legendary series edited by Lyn Hejinian), and is a small tour-de-force of verse forms, including prose poems and poems that are aggregates of short stanzas. "The I and the You" was the final section of her Potes and Poets volume of the same title, a poem in serial forms governed by a Rilkean examination of personal ontology through relationships.