Kristine Snodgrass appeared in Issue 28 with PI (again), a poem that places repeated phrases beside long decimal sequences, family images, color, surreal association, and the mathematical presence of pi.
Kristine Snodgrass in the historical archive
Issue 28’s contributor note describes Snodgrass in a single playful word: “prestidigidangerous.” The poem itself works through repetition and transformation, letting a small vocabulary expand through altered order and numerical interruption.
PI (again)
The poem opens with permutations of “twilight,” “plea bargain,” “gray angels,” “pantomime,” and “oranges.” Those phrases recur in changing arrangements, creating a verbal pattern whose repetition mirrors the numerical sequence that follows.
Numbers and verbal pattern
Long stretches of pi divide the poem into sections. Decimal expansion becomes a visible structural element, giving the page a second system of order beside the repeated words.
Family, color, and surreal image
Between the numerical passages, the poem introduces a dog, a mother, a newly born child, death, the color red, Oscar Wilde, sheep tallow, and opera glasses. The images create an associative field where mathematics and intimate memory occupy the same composition.
Repetition and change
The closing verbal sequence returns to the opening vocabulary in another order. Recurrence gives the poem continuity, while every rearrangement changes emphasis and relation.
Further reading
Continue with Issue 28, the archive’s guide to sound in poetry, and its page on poetic forms.