Francis DiClemente's Poecabulary is a stunning example of that now all-too-rare book in our contemporary poetry landscape: a genuine, focused experiment with specific elements of the English language. Born from the poet's "obsession" with vocabulary, the alphabetically-organized collection sets words in pairs (156 pairs—6 for each letter of the alphabet) connected through homophones, other musical qualities, shared etymological roots, or spelling and visual similarities. Apart from section breaks which mark the transition from one letter of the alphabet to another, each page of the collection features only the two chosen words, one placed on top of the other. Two words per page! The earliest moments of the book rattle and challenge our expectations for what a book can be, how it can behave. But we soon understand what to do.

In his brief author's note, DiClemente writes, "I created this work as wordplay—an exercise to incite imagination and illicit connections in the reader's mind." In this way, Poecabulary is fully intended as a collaborative experience (all reading is, of course, but collaboration is at the forefront of this particular collection). To read the collection is to be brought into a creative and intellectual game. What is similar? What is different? What does one word mean to the other? What arguments, stories, commentaries, dreams, songs, etc. might spin out from where these words meet? DiClemente makes no gesture to suggest how the reader should connect the words, but some pairs to appear to be chosen for their loaded contexts and immediate associative energy: “Abortion/Adoption,” “Comfort/Confront,” “Meritocracy/Mediocrity,” etc.

The consistent format, the first word atop the second, surely serves as an intentional control for this experiment. Variance in word placement would add a potentially distracting variable to the project of openly inviting readerly associations. However, the arrangement does also raise speculation about the possibilities of alternative placements. In some cases, it is difficult to separate "above and below" from readings of hierarchy and value. Is “Home” better than, of higher priority, or the more powerful than “Hope,” for instance? Would setting the words beside one another alter the tension and suggest equality, or would it place typical anglophone reading practice (right-to-left) or even political binaries (right or left) in a troublingly ordinary order? Seemingly, DiClemente has chosen the best structural arrangement, but the reader is always conscious of (perhaps purposefully so) what it means for one word to hang over another, or for one word to bear the weight of another above it.

Poecabulary does what any good poetry collection should—it offers itself up as the site of interactive play between a poet's invitation and a reader's interpretation. But the DiClemente has given the reader a special gift here, an opportunity to reencounter familiar words and meet new ones in combinations that interrupt our patterns of meaning-making to see what else is possible.