dan1066's review
4.0
Thought you followed
someone else's thought,
thought you saw
where it was going
or, if not, could
hold the expected
turn
and the actual trajectory
side by side
for an instant
thus:
a shadow,
"Pleasantly surprised."
"Thus"
If I reveal myself
mercilessly,
what will I not transcend?
*
Like God, I will leave
an arc
of implication
"Mother's Day"
This was my first foray into Rae Armantrout's poetry. At times I was frustrated with the skeletal structures, the non sequitur stanzaic constructions: "What is this supposed to mean? What am I missing to make sense of this?" After a slow run through each poem in the collection, I discerned the work is not a "collection" of individual pieces, but pieces arranged as a whole. It's all one poem. And, while I have difficulty articulating the experience--best described using Armantrout's description of God the Creator as "an arc of implication"--I return to passages over and over to reflect on their beauty or emotion or, at rare moments, meaning.
This train of thought
is not a train,
but a tendril,
blind.
It's a line
of ants
following a scent trail.
Or a string of stragglers
on a death march.
"At Least"
Think of this collection as a fractal: Words are placed alongside words which create baffling, at times conflicting, meanings. Then sentences are placed similarly; then stanzas repeat the pattern; then whole poems are set one against another. Armantrout likes to find poetic pieces in her notebooks and place them against other pieces from elsewhere; often, she's uncertain if the tenuous connection she believes they have actually exists between two sentences, between two stanzas. She strategically arranges her resulting poems similarly, one against the other. The entire work echoes the structure of its component parts. It's frustrating at times because Armantrout winnows her words so thoroughly there seems no narrator present. The reader must struggle to make connections. The effort is worthwhile and rewarding.
What really got me was how Armantrout maintains a poetic reflection on God, poetry, and existence while maintaining a respectful distance. She allows the juxtaposition, the odd combinations, do a tremendous amount of heavy lifting. She isn't "just saying," she's singing. When we come to the final poems, music becomes a motif. The final poem, "Stop and Go," provides an excellent stop for this collection:
1.
Long burst of tweets.
We wait to see
if it picks up again
from the same place --
the place we came from?
2.
Stop,
I know this one.
It goes
everything's
a metaphor
for sensation.
someone else's thought,
thought you saw
where it was going
or, if not, could
hold the expected
turn
and the actual trajectory
side by side
for an instant
thus:
a shadow,
"Pleasantly surprised."
"Thus"
If I reveal myself
mercilessly,
what will I not transcend?
*
Like God, I will leave
an arc
of implication
"Mother's Day"
This was my first foray into Rae Armantrout's poetry. At times I was frustrated with the skeletal structures, the non sequitur stanzaic constructions: "What is this supposed to mean? What am I missing to make sense of this?" After a slow run through each poem in the collection, I discerned the work is not a "collection" of individual pieces, but pieces arranged as a whole. It's all one poem. And, while I have difficulty articulating the experience--best described using Armantrout's description of God the Creator as "an arc of implication"--I return to passages over and over to reflect on their beauty or emotion or, at rare moments, meaning.
This train of thought
is not a train,
but a tendril,
blind.
It's a line
of ants
following a scent trail.
Or a string of stragglers
on a death march.
"At Least"
Think of this collection as a fractal: Words are placed alongside words which create baffling, at times conflicting, meanings. Then sentences are placed similarly; then stanzas repeat the pattern; then whole poems are set one against another. Armantrout likes to find poetic pieces in her notebooks and place them against other pieces from elsewhere; often, she's uncertain if the tenuous connection she believes they have actually exists between two sentences, between two stanzas. She strategically arranges her resulting poems similarly, one against the other. The entire work echoes the structure of its component parts. It's frustrating at times because Armantrout winnows her words so thoroughly there seems no narrator present. The reader must struggle to make connections. The effort is worthwhile and rewarding.
What really got me was how Armantrout maintains a poetic reflection on God, poetry, and existence while maintaining a respectful distance. She allows the juxtaposition, the odd combinations, do a tremendous amount of heavy lifting. She isn't "just saying," she's singing. When we come to the final poems, music becomes a motif. The final poem, "Stop and Go," provides an excellent stop for this collection:
1.
Long burst of tweets.
We wait to see
if it picks up again
from the same place --
the place we came from?
2.
Stop,
I know this one.
It goes
everything's
a metaphor
for sensation.
trilobiter's review
3.0
I think I enjoyed myself a lot more often than I understood what was going on, which is probably a good sign. I don't think reading a poem over a few times is a bad reading experience. But consequently, I'm having a difficult time articulating what this book is about. Probably it isn't about anything, but I'm not making any guarantees. In any case it is enjoyable, and fairly often comprehensible, so I think it could be worth your time.
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