Driven to AbstractionEven in a state of geometrical grace we cannot see time as it is, only as it passes. So the river shows us while softly disfiguring our waterlogged bodies on the way to vast projects of war. Rosmarie Waldrop Driven to Abstraction is Rosmarie Waldrop's sixth collection of poetry with New Directions. The first of its two sections, "Sway Backed Powerlines," consists of five sequences of prose poems whose subject matter ranges from voyages of discovery