Wow! eBook
Just Saying
Author(s): Rae Armantrout (Author)
- Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
- Publication Date: 21 Mar. 2013
- Language: English
- Print length: 124 pages
- ISBN-10: 0819572993
- ISBN-13: 9780819572998
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Review
“No poet gets caustic, or self-critical, or sarcastic, as well as Armantrout, whose quick stanzas–half Twitter, half Emily Dickinson–say a lot about how language, money, love, and memory can fail us, and in very little space. This collection, in particular, might give readers still on the outside of Armantrout’s brilliance a set of new ways in.”–Publishers Weekly
“Rae Armantrout’s poems roll out in gentle bursts. They are short, often funny, but also deeply felt works written in plain, direct language, with unusual line breaks that keep your attention on their singular rhythm and pointed, poignant imagery.”–Robert Ham, The Portland Mercury
“The technique of construction by which she prefers to give wholeness to poems is to isolate a word, a bit of jargon or cliché, and move it further and further outside of its expected usage. The multiple appearances of this ordinary word run a thread through several discrete episodes. You often don’t notice the thread until she pulls it taut, at which point it becomes a spine. . . . This effect is characteristic and unique. It can take any content. It can even take any tone. It can be teasing, curious, threatening, knowing, sarcastic, paranoid, proud, gentle. The feeling it names, however, is consistent. Not ecstatic or epiphanic, but something more like what Archimedes meant when he shouted, Eureka!”–Aaron Kunin, Lana Turner
“Armantrout’s poems advance through precise, almost Dickinsonian lines, where prolixity is skillfully trimmed down to reveal taut and muscular lines and stanzas: minimal words, maximum weight.”–Matthew Gagne, Jacket 2
“Armantrout articulates across her career all of the concerns of language poetry: postmodern culture, self-reflexivity, the materiality of language, semiotics and deconstruction, disruption of the symbolic order, and oppositional politics inherent in the interruption of the language of seamless ideological discourse.”–Ross Leckie, The Fiddlehead
“This is a poetry that values music in the sense of a John Cage and not a Mozart–where themes are not necessarily expected to be developed or recapitulated, where what has come before does not play much of a role in what comes next, where the out-of-sync is given as much space in the composition as the in-sync. I feel as though I could spend many more paragraphs exploring possibilities for the meaning of this one poem, and that’s what makes Just Saying a very worthwhile book. Its exploratory poetics will get you exploring too. It’s a poetry, primarily, of the mind. Just Saying is a useful book. It sets one thinking. It destroys common patterns of thought, pretensions of knowledge, empties us of our self-importance. It even, at times, places us on the edge of beauty, puts it on our tongues to taste it, then pulls it away before we can savor it. I feel better prepared now, but for what, I just can’t say.”–N.S. Boone, Southern Humanities Review
“She assembles images, thoughts and sensations-things seen, heard, overhead-and finds inconspicuous patterns in them, never losing the abiding sense that saying anything might mean pretending to know too much. Yet many poems lead to overpowering revelations that will be lost on those only committing to a cursory read. Rae Armantrout’s full bibliography is important and possibly essential. But it seems to matter that we don’t ignore the incredibly high level at which she is currently writing. If there are few variations in style, one might remember that her poems are new like every day is new: as long as the world is changing, there is fodder.”–John Deming, Cold Front
“Armantrout is on the lookout for the live-wire of the moment, the chatter of the now. She overhears, she jots, she scans. ‘See something, say something, ‘ a poem begins. It’s Armantrout’s credo, her ars poetica. Everything she sees becomes a poem–a suspicious package.”–Michael Robbins, Chicago Tribune
“No poet gets caustic, or self-critical, or sarcastic, as well as Armantrout, whose quick stanzas–half Twitter, half Emily Dickinson–say a lot about how language, money, love, and memory can fail us, and in very little space. This collection, in particular, might give readers still on the outside of Armantrout’s brilliance a set of new ways in.”–Publishers Weekly
“Armantrout explores existential questions with rare economy. Here the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet scrutinizes marketing slogans, corporate catchphrases, and metaphysical quandaries.”–Carolyn Alessio, Booklist
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
just saying
Wesleyan Poetry
By RAE ARMANTROUT
Wesleyan University Press
Copyright ©2013 Rae Armantrout
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8195-7299-8
Contents
Acknowledgments……………………………………………………ixScripture…………………………………………………………1Instead…………………………………………………………..3Old School………………………………………………………..5Dress Up………………………………………………………….6Accounts………………………………………………………….7Event Horizon……………………………………………………..9Cold……………………………………………………………..10Just Saying……………………………………………………….11Ghosted…………………………………………………………..13Remainder…………………………………………………………15Suggestion………………………………………………………..17Spent…………………………………………………………….19My Taste………………………………………………………….20Haunts……………………………………………………………21Parting Shots……………………………………………………..23Inflection………………………………………………………..24The Look………………………………………………………….26At Least………………………………………………………….28Holding Pen……………………………………………………….30Subdivision……………………………………………………….31My Apocalypse……………………………………………………..32Things……………………………………………………………33Entry…………………………………………………………….35Arrivals………………………………………………………….37Circulating……………………………………………………….39Production………………………………………………………..40Being Seen………………………………………………………..41Transactions………………………………………………………43At……………………………………………………………….45Action Poem……………………………………………………….46The Thinning………………………………………………………47Elements of Blank………………………………………………….49Situation…………………………………………………………50Midst…………………………………………………………….52Representative…………………………………………………….53Second Order………………………………………………………55Scale…………………………………………………………….56Custom……………………………………………………………58And………………………………………………………………59Treatment…………………………………………………………60Coming Out………………………………………………………..61Watch This………………………………………………………..63Experts…………………………………………………………..64Experimental Design………………………………………………..66Meeting Expectations……………………………………………….67Problem Areas……………………………………………………..68Between Islands……………………………………………………69Half Lives………………………………………………………..71Progress………………………………………………………….72The Music Teacher………………………………………………….74Without End……………………………………………………….75Bardos……………………………………………………………77Living Space………………………………………………………79Luster……………………………………………………………81Formal Constraints…………………………………………………83Rounds……………………………………………………………85Mother’s Day………………………………………………………86Thus……………………………………………………………..88Focus…………………………………………………………….89The Elect…………………………………………………………90New Intelligence…………………………………………………..91Another…………………………………………………………..93Still and All……………………………………………………..94Real Time…………………………………………………………96Meant…………………………………………………………….98Hymn……………………………………………………………..100Stop and Go……………………………………………………….101
Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
SCRIPTURE
Your violins pursue
the downhill course
of streams,
even to their wild
curls and cowlicks.
To repeat
is not to catch.
* * *
Consider the hummingbirds,
how they’re gussied up
and monomaniacal
as the worst (or best)
of you.
Consider the bright,
streamlined emergency
they manifest.
* * *
My leaves form bells,
topknots,
small cups of sex,
overweening, unstoppered.
Not one of you
with all your practice
is so extravagantly
coiffed.
INSTEAD
1
To each his own
severance package.
The Inca
hacked large stones
into the shapes of
nearby peaks.
2
The eerie thing
is that ghosts don’t exist.
Rows
of clear droplets
hang from stripped twigs
instead.
3
Pain brings attention
to herself.
Spine on Fire!
Trail Blazer!
(Thinks she’s hot.)
Out here
slim trunks bend
every which
OLD SCHOOL
Pull strings taut and
something like
points reappear
in the model.
Take place. Momentum
is conserved. Carry
elementary clone world
punctuation. Hostile
fetus. Cancer
is old school.
Impersonal. Carry
imperial aspirations.
To aspirate
is to breathe in
and choke. Nobody
wants this.
“Nobody did this
to me,” screams
now blind Cyclops.
Nobody’s listening
is conserved.
DRESS UP
To be “dressed”
is to emit
“virtual particles.”
* * *
The spirit of “renormalization” is that
an electron
all by itself
can have infinite
mass and charge,
but, when it’s “dressed” …
* * *
A toddler stares at us
till we look up.
“Flirtatious,” we call it.
She waits
until we get the joke
about being here,
being there.
ACCOUNTS
for Brian Keating
Light was on its way
from nothing
to nowhere.
Light was all business
Light was full speed
when it got interrupted.
Interrupted by what?
When it got tangled up
and broke
into opposite
broke into brand-new things.
What kinds of things?
Drinking Cup
“Thinking of you!
Convenience Valet”
How could speed take shape?
* * *
Hush!
Do you want me to start over?
* * *
The fading laser pulse
Information describing the fading laser pulse
is stored
is encoded
in the spin states
of atoms.
God
is balancing his checkbook
God is encrypting his account.
This is taking forever!
EVENT HORIZON
A street person? –
unshaven, haggard –
in a button-down
and a full black skirt.
If an image could talk,
what would it say?
A man in a skirt participates.
A man in a skirt
is never alone?
* * *
We are never alone.
We are men in skirts.
I am.
I draw attention
to myself.
To make a black hole,
one must concentrate.
COLD
What does it take
to stay warm?
Fire in a cage,
gnawing on wood,
throwing sprite
after sprite
off
to extinction.
Each baby’s soul
is cute
in the same way.
Rapt attention
on a stalk,
surprised by thirst.
JUST SAYING
What might be said
to disport itself
along the cinderblock
in leaves.
* * *
What I write
I write instead
of ivy.
* * *
Green snouts
in evidence or –
more
to the point –
insolent
and tense.
* * *
What might be said
to writhe
professionally as the days
nod and wink.
GHOSTED
1
Long, loose,
spindly, green
stalks with their few
leaves, bug-eaten
tatters
on which
a black monarch
sits, folding
and unfolding
its wings.
2
A friend’s funeral has broken up –
or was that the last dream?
Now I’m struggling
between monuments,
looking for Chuck.
It’s getting dark
and I’m pissed off
because he won’t answer his cell.
3
On the wall in a coffee bar,
a model’s arms
and stern, pretty face
frame a window
(where her chest should be)
and a clear sky beyond
REMAINDER
String of empty offices,
illuminated, festive?
* * *
People exist
to attach importance.
* * *
I practice
high speed deselection.
* * *
The difference
between nothing
and nothingness
is existence.
* * *
My dead friends
don’t visit me;
they say I didn’t
know them.
* * *
You are cautious
indolent, stubborn,
skeptical, gentle, tense.
* * *
At sunset, pigeons
practice synchronized flying.
* * *
Thus “are” becomes “is,”
“is” becomes “ness.”
* * *
Let the burning spill
extend
SUGGESTION
Your brain feels swollen,
as if it’s floating
on a string, no, on two,
each held in the balled fist
of an eye.
The feeling produces this image:
two crying children –
brother and sister? –
clutching strings
in an old city of brick, stone.
What does this image explain?
* * *
“In the beginning”
In the end,
these are –
there are –
only suggestions:
“Clockwise” or “counter” –
though there are no clocks.
“Horizontal” or “vertical” –
though there is no horizon.
* * *
Being aware of anything outside yourself
means you aren’t sleeping
so you have pushed things away.
Now you are alone with pain.
Pain is as large as you are
and is not obedient.
If you became pain, perhaps,
then you could rest.
But it is not possible
to merge with pain.
SPENT
Suffer as in allow.
List as in want.
Listless as in transcending
desire, or not rising
to greet it.
To list
is to lean,
dangerously,
to one side.
Have you forgotten?
Spent
as in exhausted.
MY TASTE
What it means
to “own sake.”
* * *
How to explain
my taste
for phone lines,
the shared slouch
of those two
or this one
like a ruler
where a hummingbird
marks the center
slash.
* * *
This yard which
for years
was a blond patch
and is now
a stylish desert,
bronze crushed granite
between bushes
flowering furiously
HAUNTS
1
Rock eaten
to familiar shapes –
heads cocked
on jagged spines.
* * *
How many
orange, pink, white
rock pinnacles
are visible from here?
Grandeur
is that number
plus distance,
as if “again”
could be made manifest.
2
“Nature” was a 19th-century fad,
cousin to eugenics.
In the 21st century,
America’s soft core’s
undead.
* * *
On how many bookstore shelves,
lovely, fanged teenagers,
red-eyed, smeared with blood.
PARTING SHOTS
1
Long, confident sentences
of the early visitors,
so unlike ours,
so much like one another,
remark
on the sculpted “grandeur”
of the walls,
and then, with one light touch,
on the bracing sense
of insignificance
that they impart.
2
Behind the only wall in sight,
the defamiliarized wall,
a sniper
tells a camera crew
his work is “invigorating”
because it’s “personal.”
INFLECTION
When I wake up, I’m dragging
lower incisors
along those above,
and, for an instant,
I experience
satisfaction and fear
in equal parts.
* * *
I’m reading, “The wrath of God
inflicts dragons,
ostriches,
and owls,
seductively singing.”
Go on.
* * *
Babble:
horns punctuate
a flexible roar.
* * *
Some roofs have one
or more
water tanks
with pointed hats;
some roofs have none.
Some squares are black
and trimmed in silver;
some are gray.
THE LOOK
The boxer crab
attaches a sea anemone
to each claw,
waves.
* * *
You, small flower-bearing stick,
what is your true name?
* * *
Spooked and spooked again.
It’s cute
when the intricately patterned
black and yellow fish
twitches
and shoots off
in a new direction.
* * *
From birth,
you’ve been moving
your eyes
back and forth,
looking
to be hailed.
(Continues…)Excerpted from just saying by RAE ARMANTROUT. Copyright © 2013 by Rae Armantrout. Excerpted by permission of Wesleyan University Press.
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