for a phrase-based poet like Bruce Andrews, "[t]he phrases are units. The poem goes: unit ... unit ... unit. After a while a point of balance in the phrase begins to be heard; it takes on a meaning of its own. At first, one is not particularly hearing the words due to their referential shifts; it takes work to get from one isolated frame of reference to another at the speed of reading out loud. But what actually happens is that the rhythmic parallels turn into a meaning-structuring device. After ten minutes of this the phrases start to assume a rhythmic point of balance; the words take on weight in relation to them." [Watten's summation, 17]
"One gets completely exhausted by all [the] phrasal shift; you hear it as sound and wait for the meaning to catch up [...] It's the rhythmic insistence that finally catches up." (this pushes back on Bob Perelman's suggestion that Andrews is working with a technique of "defamiliarization"; Watten also responds "the fact that the semantic shift is constant doesn't make for any new perception")
contrast Andrews' approach against Coolidge's which is "very fluid [...] additive rather than isolating" (both 20)