52 contemporary poetry
for the lyric draw striking parallels for the consideration of the slip-
periness of subjectivity and the confi guration of memory:
The lyric can provide a literary approximation of those fl eet-
ing moments of experience through which the present comes
into being. In the lyric, where syntactically digressive devices
work against narrative, the word both is and is not temporally
fi xed, and thus through lyricism, the past and the future along
with the affective frames proper to each, namely longing and
regret become presentized.^53The emphasis on the simultaneity of past and present indicates
that lyric memory becomes the traditional complex of a present-
tense evocation of the past. Moxley’s reference to what she calls
‘digressive’ strategies points us to interruptions in the text, reso-
nances that hamper poetry’s assimilation into an immediate nar-
rative. She questions emphatically the nostalgia and amnesia of
experiential recounting, or what she lineates eloquently in ‘The
Cover Up’ from her volume The Line ( 2004 ) as an experience gone
‘except in the deceitful subjective’.^54 Her poetry is densely musical,
incorporating citation, digression, meditation and a provisional
self-refl exive testing of the personal poem.
The poems from Imagination Verses are highly charged and
emotive in a way that challenges the more immediate revelations of
confessional verse. A key characteristic of this volume is Moxley’s
ability to suture intense personal perception and political observa-
tion. Situating these poems in time can also be a diffi cult prospect.
‘Ode on the Son’ appears to place us in a quest for epic and romance
with the questioning: ‘Where is my fi eld of wheat, / my fl ock, my
ocean / my arsenal, my knight errant’ (p. 17 ); while one of the
longer poems from this volume, ‘Ten Prolegomena to Heartbreak’,
makes reference to acts of duelling in conjunction with ‘the Avant-
Garde lover / of hope’ (p. 85 ) and a protagonist who dreams of
‘fi lmic meetings with big scores’ (p. 88 ). Moxley’s language is more-
over one of constant detour and transgression; she states ‘I am such
an inept navigator / of woe betide, a miserable egomaniac’ (p. 85 ).
In Imagination Verses lyricism can appear to be a doubtful
strategy for political change, and feelings of hesitation and self-