Literary Nonfiction. Criticism and Theory. Poetics. This collection of writing represents, in Sondheim's words, "a basic text for postmodern poets." Sondheim states, "My approach would describe something like the impossible search for the grounds of the Self in sexuality and ideology; the hysteria of the loss of speech; a work situated between poetry and theory that extends the boundaries of theory itself; 'the poetry of deconstruction'; 'the narrative of loss'..."