[Zukofsky is] the classic eiron described in Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism: self-deprecating, seldom vulnerable, artful, given to understatement, modest or mock-modest, indirect, objective, dispassionate, unassertive, sophisticated, and maybe foreign…. (p. 8)

For whatever reason (and reasons are legion), the eiron's art—irony—amounts to saying two or more things at one time, so that an auditor with 20/20 ears ought to hear an ironic utterance as a chord of sorts, one that displays its own meaning in its own sound as harmonies among cord and chord, accord and a chord, even choral and coral. (p. 10)

What the solo modern prose voice at the beginning of "A" accomplishes is … to suggest both irony and fugue complexly: by talking about a piece of vocal-instrumental polyphony and by doing so in ways that are themselves fugal or quasi-fugal:

            A
                 Round of fiddles playing Bach.

"A" equals air (aria) with different values...