Intellectual Texture or Finding the Tabletop

I don't think this is something I have ever called for in quite this way, but recently I was making comments/notes on a student's poem and I wrote, "Cheese, cheese, cheese--you need a cracker."

And it was true. I was swirling in a vortex of color and sensation--kind of like the The Manchurian Candidate, Frank Sinatra's eyes about to roll up into his head! And as much as I beg for image in any of its guises or on any of its layers, I needed some kind of tabletop to get my foot on, too, so I could stand up and see what was going on in the poem.

I needed some grounding or stage which implies direction or a stance, and I needed some other kind of information as counterpoint to act as a balance to the heavy dose of image that was pouring on me like syrup. And I needed measure.

This should be easier to mete out than sound texture, but it doesn't seem to be, maybe because sound has more recognizable dualities and information texture is more like a color wheel or a centrifuge gone wild. The tongue limiting but the mind endless and without time.