Annalisa Pesek at American Book Review writes about Mark Rutkoski’s Words of Love and expounds on the concept of  an index as reading material or reference:

If read, do the words have meaning or does their separation from the “sonnet whole” bare enough poetic appeal to be poetry? In an attempt at answering this question I found Adam Jameson’s recent posting on HTMLGIANT, “The difference between a concept & a constraint, part 1: What is a concept?”, extremely helpful for explaining the basics of conceptual writing, using the words of Kenneth Goldsmith:

“The best thing about conceptual poetry is that it doesn’t need to be read. You don’t have to read it. As a matter of fact, you can write books, and you don’t even have to read them. My books, for example, are unreadable. All you need to know is the concept behind them.”

Words of Love isn’t unreadable (I enjoyed reading it more than once), nor does it have to be read. For me, Rutkoski’s index illuminates how many ways there are to read and extract meaning from words.

Read the full review here.