Accurate representations of the human body or its detailed descriptions are rare or even missing from Shapiro's poetry: what the readers find there is fragmentated at best. In fact, the (speaker's) body is the great invisible in this poetry as a vantage point; but the existence of a capable body that is able to perceive/receive the sensations linked to the external world and in consequence produce art is the prerequisite of poetry.
Perception is a function of what senses convey, which imposes limits on what is perceived and what can subsequently be reproduced.
Shapiro's speaker does not convey his own personal sensations; what is being described is either filtered/mediated through the external agents like allegories, and rarefied into art.
Shapiro's poetry is (very rightly) considered highly intellectual and sophisticated. Yet it also strikes the reader as sensual - also at times when it is not erotic. As Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe wrote,
'(…) His work is extremely dense, in terms of intertextuality, but very supple, or perhaps more exactly fluid, in the sense of a liquidity rather than musculature' (Fink and Lease: 161).
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