An obsessive concern with its own constituent elements, its words, dominates Francis Ponge's poetry. This trait, which should not be confused with narcissism, appears in many guises and contexts, and yet it always manages to illuminate some aspect of a single, coherent vision. Scrutinizing Ponge's self-consciousness, we make out the contours of his vision. As we do, we realize that his work has a special relevance for our time….

In part because of their pervasive self-consciousness, Ponge's texts hardly conform to most conceptions of what poems, even prose poems, are or should be. They contain puns, false starts, repetitions, agendas, recapitulations, syllogistic overtones, a heavy ideological content, and other features that one normally associates with prose—and the prose of argumentation at that—rather than with poetry. Nevertheless, Ponge is without question a poet, but one who has moved so far away from both the pure poetry and...