The title refers not to Malcom, but to a generic figure, an algebraic variable looking into the stars to ask the question that will define itself. Gregorio uses "X" as a tool, placing it in situations, defining it and redefining it as a means to arrive at metaphors that serve as pieces of answers to the eternal questions.
This book is full of abstract talk that comes not from sensual love or words but from the effort to speak in what one critic calls "that almost unsayable area of experience between human beings." Gregorio often seems to be trying to write poems despite words: "It is the place of stations./ The lingering between worlds./ A feast of exhausted heat./ All possessions and trappings/ elsewhere."--Mike Gill
This review originally appeared in TapRoot Reviews #4,
Contact the editor, luigi-bob drake, at Burning Press
Copyright Burning Press 1994, 1995.