Response to City Eclogue

Ed Roberson's City Eclogue was a difficult read for me.  Often I need to read poems several times to find meaning, though reading Roberson's works through and through I still see sporadic piles of words across the pages.  There were sections of poems (though no poem in it's entirety) that I enjoyed, but did not necessarily understand.

Within the section Beauty's Standing, there is an italicized portion on page 12 (page 71) titled Beauty's Standing (II):

It has       of those decorator's centuries
that hollowness,       that emptiness that who


all this was for don' sit here,       is not
here       and this is, whatever it is


A people's time as a chair;       their hunger---
a bowl, an ornate dinnerware;       the fill---


one piece of unknown use short,       its failure,
by the thousands


                        of the bellies now a currency,
a pattern, a simple handiwork betrayed


Roberson is writing about a room, possibly a dining room, from a different period of time.  It is extravagantly decorated and to me, he sees it as either a time passed or a waste.  He calls it empty, they hunger for something which can be filled with material.

In addition to Beauty's Standing (II) and the section Beauty's Standing, Roberson writes another poem of the same name on the page (37) prior to the section.  Again the literal focus is a room, full of decoration yet somehow empty.  I'd like to know the background on these poems and how they are all related.  I think the language of them is beautiful and I really enjoyed those excerpts over the rest of the material.