What [Nobody Owns th Earth,] makes clearest is that Bill Bissett is specifically a religious poet. His vision is of a transcendent, static world, simple and hard in outline, paralleling our own complex and sordid one just beyond the usual limitations of human perception…. More Blakean than Emersonian, this other world can become visible to us during prayers, incantations, or dreams…. (p. 44)

At moments of extreme intensity—religious trances, sexual intercourse—the subject can enter completely into this elemental world of eternal condition. Thus early in Nobody Owns th Earth is a group of love poems…. The religious counterparts to these poems are the mantras, the prayers, the incantations—"Added Weight," "Prayers for th One Habitation," "Armageddon News," "Tempul Firing," and "Holy Day."… (pp. 44-5)

Because of the Platonic overtones of these overtly religious poems, their diction can appear limited and infantile. The dominant part of speech is...