MCClure with animal language; ordinary language

In order to fully understand what is going on with McClure's switches between animal language and beast language, we must first distinguish the two from one another. The "ordinary" language of Ghost Tantras generally takes on a tone that can be described generally as "poetic". It has a certain resemblance to the language of conventional poetry, with lines like "I dreamed you eyes awake, hole you / toes soft" (16). As we can see from this quote, the conventional nature of English is distorted by putting words together in a way that seems to have syntactic sense and some unified purpose, but is also not comprehensive based on how the words fail to combine in a typical way to form an utterance. Alternatively, his animal language cannot be described as adhering to any implicit "rules" of language, because we do not understand this language he writes in. It is often evident based on capitalization, but this changes in the later half of the book where ordinary utterances are capitalized and animal language is integrated into the phrases of English. What is most striking about the animal language is its phonology, where the spoken word is something quite far from what we are used to hearing and has its foundation in the primal scream.

McClure initially moves between these modes of language very swiftly, with immediate shifts between lines from one style to another. However, somewhere around tantra 49 (if we are thinking of them chronologically), the English segments seem somehow explanatory of what is actually happening in the animal language. Taking 49 as an example, it is introducing the importance of animal language, preparing the audience for it, and then finally engaging in a long segment of repetitive primal scream. Later poems include animal language in ways that make them seem to be translations of the English in a fairly integrative version of code-switching. For example, 58's "and lashes itself upon the mukti'd air", where the animal language term "mukti'd" is not designated by any spacing or capitalization and it seems to be taking the place of an adjective describing air in this utterance.

To answer briefly whether there is poetry in both: yes. I have already mentioned the poetic quality of the ordinary language, and the animal language also takes its place by conveying a strong feeling, e.g. in 67, the interjection of "ROGTRAYOMF!" gives the tantra a certain quality reminiscent of a persuasive speech that might have a chant within it. Also, the spirituality of the animal language emphasizes its poetic factor.