Twixt one logic and the next

Two Critical Approaches to Geoffrey's Poem "Untitled LVII"

With optimism tentative he ends
(Rather concludes contingently) his verse —
Which for its force ambivalent depends
Upon the text he is inclined to curse.

What can one say — "hypocrite!" is an option
It has been said so many times before!
Or else, "'Tis sport to see," (as in citation);
"The engineer hoist with his own petar."

It's certainly unfair to deconstruct it —
In metrical decay overdetermined
It lies in ruins utterly unstructured
Overambitious and unselfexamined.

Unlike itself it lies like certain fossils,
Last decadent product of its generation,
Like Keats's or like Sylvia Plath's Colossus
Not even adequate to its resignation.

Travestied, fragmented modernist text
Just failing, elegiac, to go down fighting
Suspended twixt one logic and the next
End of the book and the beginning of writing!