Should poetry be fading out, being eclipsed, erased even—for that it would have had “to be inkscribed 2 on the page or in society” ; and were the poem to be eclipsed, well, “what would what had taken its place be called” ? A meditation as to poetry’s contemporary status, in particular its relationship to the notion of commitment as protective talisman re effacement, circumscribes poetry’s role and functions and renders it rather immune to the idea of its disappearance — if not to that of its necessary social discretion…