no comparison

I saw him later, carrying around a strange sculpture difficult to describe, because there was no comparison to it in the natural world.

Brenda Coultas, “The Bowery Project,” page 24

Speaking of traits that shock us, human beings’ urban habitats and relations with things would be among the most shocking if they weren’t so familiar. I have to think of these human environments as “natural” because where else would they come from?

What Coultas’s piece offers is sustained attention. This is a natural history skill, and one readily applied by poets. It is good to direct the attention of language to surroundings that are generally scorned.

This piece is in the form of prose fragments. Fragments build up into something, just like a garbage dump does. They have a natural feel. There is a familiar use of language here.

I don’t find this piece exciting though. Is it because of the topic? or some other reason? It lacks luminosity (optimism?).