Earlier I called him a formalist. One of the techniques he uses to hold together his wild associations is form. With the exception of the book’s first poem, he uses nontraditional, invented forms. A quick flip through the book reveals a high level of visual experimentation. Almost every poem creates a distinct visual impression. His forms include narrow, center aligned poems; a solid block of completely capitalized text; two-column poems designed for alternating voices; a poem set as a play script; and a poem in which empty brackets separate the phrases.

A notable one is “try city®,” a prose poem of 333 numbered sections with most sections containing only three words. Here is the ending:

As with “sitibodis,” he uses the form’s frame to both reinforce meaning and work against it. Sometimes a single thought is contained within an individual numbered unit; sometimes an idea runs across multiple units. However, the numbered sections and the wall-to-wall margins create the impression of an ordered, tightly controlled expression. It reminds me of looking at the outside of a city apartment building and getting an impression of order and balance, while a closer look at those who populate the building reveals wildly clashing values, attitudes and habits. The tension in Noel’s poems between form and content enacts the pressurized, overwhelming experience of the city.

Not all of Noel’s experimentation works. “trill set” is a thirteen-page poem created by reciting poems in Spanish from César Vallejo’s book Trilce into an English-language voice-recognition program. The program attempted to create English words from what was read into it. Noel took what came out and shaped it into poems. One might admire Noel’s drive for the new and different but the result offers little that is artistically very interesting.

“trill set” aside, Noel is interested in much more than experimentation’s wild ride. His key interest is identity — not a traditional identity such as being Puerto Rican, a New Yorker, or Nuyorican, but one that encompasses the barrage of experiences, influences, humiliations and joys that make up the urban experience, an identity of the moment.

Throughout this impressive collection, Urayoán Noel overwhelms us with quickly shifting details and observations that enact life in the city. His goal is not to merely describe this world but to challenge how we perceive it and perceive ourselves in it. He wants, as he says in “babel o city (el gran concourse)” is to “unsettle belonging” (p. 29).

Hi-Density Politics is an energetic array of dislocating experiments and expressions wrapped in non-stop verbal gymnastics and playfulness. It is a collection that urges us not to deny the dislocation but to embrace it and use it as a way in which we identify ourselves.