Saga / Circus, by the esteemed poet Lyn Hejinian, brings us two distinctly different long poems in which the tropes of narrative and lyric—their feints and demands—stake claims amongst the actual characters presented. In this playful yet penetrating pair of poems, it is the character of Lyn Hejinian’s thought meeting our character of thought that is one of the most exciting and most constant dramatic events of the book—the richly sensational & subversive crescendos register as both melodic and discordant soundtrack.