Writing, it’s been said, remains unique because it is the only medium that can use its own form to investigate itself; that is, the art and the criticism that seeks to understand the art share the same ground. (Where is photography’s essay on the image? Where, for that matter, is a critique of Bach in the form of a symphony?) Lacking a discursive element, other forms must make do with implicit commentaries within themselves, something that the audience (which we will come to shortly) is left to tease out. But what of poetry? Ryan Ruby’s Context Collapse (Seven Stories Press, 2024) attempts just that—a discursive, book-length essay composed in verse, announced by its subtitle as “a poem containing a history of poetry.”
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