In particular, I found the Long Soldier readings rather striking due to the ways in which the pieces maintained a sense of consistency and fluidity while remaining, from a certain perspective, disjointed. Like Chloe H., I felt that the legalistic text felt fragmented and detached, creating this interesting binary effect. One the one hand, Long Soldier presents this apology, but it is presented in conjunction with the “whereas” threads. These threads are less detached and less emotionally fragmented. For me, the effect that Whereas creates is sort of montage-adjacent. The author presents these bits and pieces in such a way that, instead of creating a distinct, albeit fragmented, picture, they suggest an essence or an aura for each side: that of Long Soldier and that of the United States Government. The physical form of the poems, whether shaped as a box or scattered across a page, also increases that sense of fragmentation and montage because at no point do I come to expect a specific visual presentation for any of these works. Although these formal elements do have some bearing on my understanding of the works (for example, the poem presented on pages 94 through 96), they do not dominate nor hinder my process of comprehension. While I’m not getting any kind of crystal clear image per se, I’m certainly sensing something about each of the dominant voices that informs my understanding of each. In a lot of ways, I find this creation of essence even more powerful than distinct imagery due to the room that it provides for interpretation and perceptual effort. It also engages multiple senses for me as opposed to just that of mental sight, something that I don’t often notice when reading poetry.