52 Books in 52 Weeks, it's called. The challenge is simple: read a book every week for a year.
50. Versed.
Troy Public Library sent over a signed copy of this 2010 Pulitzer Prizewinner. Armantrout is identified with the Language poets (Creeley, Silliman), who if I understand correctly intend to involve the reader in making the meaning of the poem. She gathers phrases from the ambient conversations around her and mixes them together to suggest meaning, but much of the work is mine or yours. The poems here are often delightful to read, simply because of the juxtaposition of words, often phrases or words from the world of common speech, but in surprising arrangements. Split in two parts (“Versed,” “Dark Matter”), the second apparently dealing with illness, cancer. Silliman says (in Gale’s Contemporary Authors Online) “Trying to read a book by Rae Armantrout in a single sitting is like trying to drink a bowl of diamonds. What’s inside is all so shiny & clear & even tiny that it appears perfectly do-able. But the stones are so hard & their edges so chiseled that the instant you begin they’ll start to rip your insides apart.”
Had
1
And so I ask,
“Do you need both
skies?”
I say keep
“jets” and “its”
consistent.
I suggest
again
that you strip down
while remaining calm
2
It may be that
reclining
lessens the pressure
(or presence),
but there are still
sensations
to be considered,
no, not “considered,”
dealt with,
no, not “dealt with”
either,
had, perhaps,
but with no rights
of possession,
no sense
of constituting
past
