In perfect contrast to “Thirteen,” “Process of Elimination” gives us off-rhymes in the octave and true rhymes in the sestet. A sort of riddle, the poem challenges the reader to identify what is this “I” that speaks in a somewhat literary diction (“for” for “since”/“because” in line 3, for example). In stanza 2, in fact, the “I” addresses the reader directly with imperatives (“Subtract,” “Remove,” “Slide back”). What is at the bottom of this intellectual strip-tease? The absence of anything has never been so alluring.
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