What do "self" and "it" have in common? In Rae Armantrout's new poems, there is no inert substance. Self and it (word and particle) are ritual and rigmarole, song-and-dance and long distance call into whatever dark matter might exist. How could a self not be selfish? Armantrout accesses the strangeness of everyday occurrence with wit, sensuality, and an eye alert to underlying trauma, as in the poem "Price Points" where a man conducts an imaginary orchestra but "gets no points for originality." In their investigations of the cosmically mundane, Armantrout's poems use an extraordinary microscopic lens—even when she's glancing backwards from the outer reaches of space. An online reader's companion is available at http://raearmantrout.site.wesleyan.edu.
What do "self" and "it" have in common? In Rae Armantrout's new poems, there is no inert substance. Self and it (word and particle) are ritual and rigmarole, song-and-dance and long distance call into whatever dark matter might exist. How could a self not be selfish? Armantrout accesses the strangeness of everyday occurrence with wit, sensuality, and an eye alert to underlying trauma, as in the poem "Price Points" where a man conducts an imaginary orchestra but "gets no points for originality." In their investigations of the cosmically mundane, Armantrout's poems use an extraordinary microscopic lens—even when she's glancing backwards from the outer reaches of space. An online reader's companion is available at http://raearmantrout.site.wesleyan.edu.
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Overview
What do "self" and "it" have in common? In Rae Armantrout's new poems, there is no inert substance. Self and it (word and particle) are ritual and rigmarole, song-and-dance and long distance call into whatever dark matter might exist. How could a self not be selfish? Armantrout accesses the strangeness of everyday occurrence with wit, sensuality, and an eye alert to underlying trauma, as in the poem "Price Points" where a man conducts an imaginary orchestra but "gets no points for originality." In their investigations of the cosmically mundane, Armantrout's poems use an extraordinary microscopic lens—even when she's glancing backwards from the outer reaches of space. An online reader's companion is available at http://raearmantrout.site.wesleyan.edu.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780819574688 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Wesleyan University Press |
| Publication date: | 02/25/2015 |
| Series: | Wesleyan Poetry Series |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 112 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
RAE ARMANTROUT is the author of eleven previous books of poetry, including Just Saying, Money Shot, and Versed, winner of the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the 2009 National Book Critics Circle Award. She is a professor of writing and literature at the University of California, San Diego. This is her twelfth book.
RAE ARMANTROUT has fifteen previous books including Versed, which received a Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Award, and a National Book Critics Circle Award; Finalists; Conjure; Wobble (finalist for a National Book Award); Partly: New and Selected Poems; Itself; Just Saying; and Money Shot. Armantrout is Professor Emerita of Writing at the University of California at San Diego. She has been published in many anthologies, including, The Oxford Book of American Poetry, and Scribner's Best American Poetry, and in such magazines as, Harpers, The New Yorker, American Poetry Review, Boston Review, Scientific American, Chicago Review, and the Los Angeles Times Book Review.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
ITSELF
CHIRALITY
If I didn't need to do anything,
would I?
Would I oscillate in two or three dimensions?
Would I summon a beholder
and change chirality for "him?"
A massless particle passes through the void with no resistance.
Ask what it means to pass through the void.
Ask how it differs from not passing.
A CONCEIT
Local anchors list the ways viewers might enjoy tomorrow.
One says, "Get some great …," but that seems like a stretch.
The other snickers, meaning,
"Where were you going with that?"
Like you thought
* * *
Like you could defend vanity
in the sense of idle conceit,
vacuous self-
absorption,
doing whatever it takes to
whatever because,
really.
* * *
As if to say,
"Conceit is the vacuum energy."
SPLIT
Because you dodge yourselves by branching,
(expelling particles of light).
Because you split no-difference,
sights strike me as
* * *
A muscular gray cat trots
along the top of the cinderblock wall
separating my couch from the supermarket.
* * *
25% say, "That's just it, Pam!"
* * *
I take these white streaks
of truck
glimpsed between branches
to be blossoms.
INDUCTION
What's the take-away?
* * *
Carrying plastic buckets,
an old couple stroll along the high-water mark.
* * *
The rapture: such wings of cloud —
sleeves of fire as previously noted.
* * *
Passing obliquely through the interface,
desire is refracted.
* * *
Low sun illuminates a row of amber pill bottles,
half full.
CONCLUSION
1
A man is upset for many years because he's heard that information is destroyed in a black hole.
Question: What does this man mean by "information"?
The example given is of a cry for help,
but this is accompanied by the image of a toy space ship,
upended,
and is thus not to be taken seriously.
The man recovers his peace of mind when he ceases to believe in passing through,
when he becomes convinced that the lost information
is splattered on the event
horizon.
2
The detective is the new mime.
She acts out understanding the way a mime climbs an invisible wall.
* * *
It's because our senses are so poor that,
on CSI,
the investigators stand stock-still,
boulders in a stream,
while a crowd pours around them.
They pan in slow motion, reminding us of cameras,
then focus with inhuman clarity
on the pattern of cracks in a wall.
3
God's fractal stammer
pleasures us again.
PITCH
1
Beautiful,
the way the partita
progresses and retreats
(repeats?).
This node virtually branching
on two "sides,"
without haste or seeming intent,
almost reluctantly,
in fact,
almost "sending regrets."
2
Long-Term Technologies has made these
fully nuanced,
self-reflexive stanzas —
sliver echoes —
"Silver Acres" —
widely available
to the shelter-in-place public.
PRICE POINTS
On a traffic island, a man waves his arms as if conducting music,
and takes bows.
He gets no points for originality,
plus we're sick of being represented.
The tabloids are right.
An appearance requires scandal.
To be notable,
something must appear instead
of what?
* * *
This spike reflects.
* * *
This spike reflects global demand for food products.
DIFFERENCE
1
Catch us up to where we are today —
these pants!
this hair!
* * *
It's been a good year for unique, differentiated products.
* * *
I'm more interested in quarks:
up and down,
bottom and top,
simple units of meaning.
2
If self-love were a mirage,
it would decorate distance,
shimmer over others' eyes,
evaporate on contact
EDEN
1
About can mean near or nearly.
A book can be about something
or I can be about to do a thing and then refrain.
To refrain is to stop yourself.
A refrain is a repeated phrase.
2
This table is an antique from the early Machine Age.
The indented circle within a circle motif which appears at three-inch intervals around the base may be a nod to craftsmanship or may be a summary dismissal of same.
It is charming
in its mute simplicity.
3
People will ask, "Why should we care about this unattractive character?"
despite the fact that turning yourself into an admirable character has been considered gauche for as long as I can recall.
The word "transparent" is often affixed to such efforts while the mystification surrounding the unflattering self-portrait at least provides some cover.
Now someone will say, "You don't need cover unless you're standing naked at a window shouting, 'Look up here!'"
SONNET 3
after Wm. Shakespeare
Your dad told me to tell you how good you look to him right now.
Check yourself out. (I'm sure you do.)
You're a very pretty boy.
But the thing is, that won't last.
Have you ever seen a pert old man?
An insouciant septuagenarian?
I thought not. They're invisible.
And you'll be invisible too!
What will your dad have to look at then? Do you think growth rebounds each year? Wrong!
It has to be outsourced. Sublet.
Get with the program.
Your dad will be watching.
ITSELF
I work it until sweetness
rises of itself,
then arcs across,
unfurling petals,
and is gone.
* * *
On television hundreds of albino crabs scuffle over one steam vent.
* * *
I know you're dreaming things I haven't dreamed,
wouldn't. But that's part of your costume
like your extra appendages.
ROOMS
To be human is to count
the present
among one's possessions.
* * *
A sparsely furnished house
appears in my dreams —
or is my dream
since nothing happens
except my walking
room to room, surprised,
discomfited.
* * *
One can't have
just one
experience.
(There will be
no one
to own it.)
BIVOUAC
1
Their knees touched at night when they lay on their sides.
The pressure of the bony plates was a wall
or the pressure was union.
She had relaxed against it.
2
Meaning is sensed relation.
The body's sensed relation to space?
A body's well-being in relation to an environment.
She ripped a feather from her tail and placed it in the nest.
She discarded this and extracted a second
MATERIAL
Oh, you're wearing the gold one.
That's my favorite,
to be honest.
The gun metal is all gone.
* * *
Packet.
Pocket.
Point.
For us to consist of infinitesimal points
of want and not
makes a lot of sense.
(For a point to consist of the array
of its own possible locations
For locations to consist For "consist" to consist of a pair of empty pockets)
* * *
Here, you try it on.
FLO
1
In this spot for insurance,
a savvy young agent,
almost pretty,
says "Go Big Money!"
to a subordinate tap-dancing in a dollar-sign costume in front of her confused/
bemused clients.
This agent, Flo,
who is above it all but enthusiastic too like the Dalai Lama,
has become/
is becoming an American icon.
2
What I first saw as tiny, novel fireplaces scattered about the living room floor,
I now see as the house gone up in flames —
but this is wrong because "first"
was part of "now"
from the very start.
THE NEW IRONY
1
In the new irony,
particulars are overdetermined,
dripping context,
while the big picture remains obscure:
1940s pinup girls in Brownie uniforms,
sizes too small,
rush
toward a blazing office tower
so that rescue,
porn,
and nostalgia
converge.
2
It was my understanding that things would be muffled,
remote
SPONSOR
We drove to the slough and walked briefly along the uneven path.
There are plants here you see nowhere else,
you said.
Pickle weed? Duck weed?
Branching pipettes.
* * *
Among twenty brown hills the only moving thing was the Coca-Cola truck.
THE MATTER
The remote is for later,
as I often tell myself.
* * *
Is it possible to speak of rules without picturing the mouth of God?
He said, "You must go everywhere
and you should take the shortcut."
The angels responded at once,
as one?
Thus they are known as messengers —
though they bring nothing but their gowns.
The rest of us stand still,
flummoxed
by the hostility of pronouns
TWO AND TWO
1
If one travels to the old country and finds it
there,
she's thrilled.
Surprised.
If there and here can be made
to coincide what else might not be
possible?
2
The tapir. The tape worm.
The question. The lepton.
3
But If what
is "a mode of oscillating,"
then how
is unaccounted
for
PERSONHOOD
1
Imagine the recent dead gathered in a parking lot or lobby
wearing Victorian clothes to distinguish themselves from the passersby —
a flash mob.
They can't take themselves or one another seriously. It's hard
to hold on to an idea
2
Clearly, each orange parasol
of poppy,
having opened,
is one.
But effort is not cumulative.
It figures second to second.
A self is a lagging
indicator
FRIENDS
1
Peace be upon the transparent maroon curtain and the chesty air-conditioning unit spilling yellow foam from between its ribs,
side-swiped by sun so that shadows of the window bars around it in the shape of two Valentine's Day hearts,
one perched upside down on top of its mate,
can grow sharp.
2
In the next seat a dentist tells her friend she is reading Rent Boy to the Stars
and a book on reincarnation.
3
"I'm all used up,"
I tell myself,
"all gone"
like that was some new kind of luxury —
one I could afford!
THE COUPLE
I compare notes and snip.
More matches!
You. You know it's a very fine line.
* * *
If I am really speaking to you
from inside the echo chamber
where you float,
then something's wrong.
* * *
Ka-Ching!
I grow a bony plate around you.
Now,
what do you think?
HEADLONG
As one may be relieved by the myriad marigold faces held aloft beside the freeway —
their articulation —
and, too,
by the rush of notes following their own likenesses in these headlong phrases
Relieved of what?
Relieved of what?
FUNDAMENTALS
Why is it that for it
to be infinitely large
is terrific,
but to be
infinitely small is just
unthinkable?
The thought of a smaller
bit inside each bit
goes nowhere still
has symmetry going on
and on about it.
Then there's our model in which
the fundamentals are sound,
impenetrable nubs
MEMBRANE
MEMBRANE
When she hugged him I wanted her to hug me too because,
if she didn't,
I would have to wonder about that, whereas,
before, I would have been happy with a friendly word and,
after a slight hesitation,
she did wrap her arms around me
* * *
ion
selection
channel
membrane
* * *
Put simply,
the snake told Eve that gods
(people)
do things for reasons,
reasons they may not admit,
but which she should learn to intuit.
Once this thought had been set loose,
(once she had compared herself ...)
there would be no end of that
KEEPERS
1
On "Buried Alive,"
possessions can't be lost
or found.
They can't be exchanged.
They're negotiated
as one negotiates a landfill.
2
In the militarized evening,
Boeing
touts its service to "our troops." We're shown
soldiers pinned down.
One is strapped
to a pallet —
ready for take-off?
3
In the currency market,
I'm the judge
of a talent show or beauty pageant
in which the contestants are moments
of my life. None is good enough
to keep
POEM
Now our bodies are two scoops of ice cream beginning to melt.
"Now" can't begin.
* * *
You are not asleep now. Now does not exist when you're asleep.
Now means, "Now do something!"
I can turn over in my sleep. I can dream.
* * *
Now is when you can choose
to do something.
Then which comes now,
doing or choosing?
* * *
Skirting the edge of
what can,
could have been
meant
ALIGNMENT
She knew it was a bad idea to ask how he was doing,
or to tell him how she was,
but she could draw him out on the logical flaws in a film they had both disliked.
She wants to make their suspicions align,
face forward like two doves on a wire —
good pupils.
She wakes up when the girl hides in the old woman's house so now either the madman will kill her or nothing further will occur.
HABITAT
Habitat-themed enclosure.
Zen-inflected mug.
* * *
Around the block dogs bark at absence.
THE WAIT
A story deals with distance;
how it can be crossed.
There will be dangerous animals in the form of questions.
Some Jack of Clubs will have hit upon an answer,
beguiled hunger,
continued.
* * *
I can't wait to start out dreaming (thinking).
This means I wait.
Consciousness is so boring
with its identification of noises in the dark,
its taxonomies of grinding.
* * *
In my dreams,
feelings are tacked on to shapes.
One or the other must be an afterthought.
Together they make an awkward animal.
This is also true when I'm awake,
but for that, of course,
I am not responsible.
OCCURRENCE
Here's something about me.
I get up when sleep becomes unbearable,
when dreams repeat themselves,
minor variations on a randomly selected theme.
I go to bed when consciousness becomes unbearable,
when the house repeats itself and the television offers to think for me.
Lay-offs accelerate turn-around.
Aliens may try to communicate with us using black holes.
Here is what we know about God.
If we are made in God's image,
God is impatient without really knowing what He wishes would occur.
END USER
What do I have to say to myself?
My username is invalid.
* * *
Pain concentrates:
a continuous signal that consumes the receiver.
* * *
The belief that nature is God's speech:
small tomato cysts appear
on shingle twigs under bow-tie leaves.
* * *
So when water or shadows
are going over
"the same ground?"
* * *
"Made any money though?"
one asks
and both laugh loudly
LOOP
Curled up in bed,
I'm young in the old way.
* * *
One continuous stroke
without lifting the pen
as if
"stem, tendril,
stem, tendril"
were the words of a commandment.
* * *
My next elliptical loops read "Praise."
Word
deciphered
at a snail's pace
GEOGRAPHY
1
Touch each chakra in turn and say,
"Nothing shocks me."
2
Watching bombs fall on Syria,
we feel serious,
occupied,
not preoccupied as we were
previously.
3
"Makes me end where I begun,"
wrote John Donne,
turning love into geometry.
PERSISTENCE
What if one loves what she thinks of as her former self in what she takes to be another's eyes?
* * *
The celebration of false wealth —
or "Cold Light"—
is my favorite.
Blue glittering fruit,
as if frost might be our guest.
Countless small white bulbs behind cutout crystals.
* * *
The persistence of desire
in mind after desire
has or hasn't been fulfilled:
the "other world"
PLACE MARK
Shiva arms of the potato vine
so eager to unleash this bloom
they can spare only a few dark leaves.
* * *
Tip of the thrust
only,
like a distant spark
chipped off
and marking space.
* * *
"I feel it,"
I said
and you came.
BELIEVING
1
When did you first learn that the bursts
of color and sound were intended for you?
When did you unlearn this?
2
Believing yourself to have a secret identity can be a sign of madness.
On the other hand,
the lack of a secret identity can lead to depression.
Many have found it useful to lie down as men believing themselves to be little girls
or as girls believing themselves to be mermaids stranded in their own bodies.
HEAD
1
You just feel wrong so you convert
one neutron to a proton,
emit beta radiation.
2
You try not to squirm,
to cancel yourself out,
still, in dreams you narrate
each discharge in the first person.
3
As if you were banging your head
on every beach in frustration
CONTROL
We are learning to control our thoughts,
to set obtrusive thoughts aside.
It takes an American to do really big things.
Often I have no thoughts to push against.
It's lonely in a song about outer space.
When I don't have any thoughts,
I want one!
A close-up reveals that she has chosen
a plastic soap dish in the shape of a giant sea turtle.
Can a thought truly be mine if I am not currently thinking it?
There are two sides to any argument;
one arm in each sleeve.
* * *
Maybe I am always meditating,
if by that you mean
searching for a perfect stranger.
DIFFICULTY
It's difficult not to be sentimental
about the sun at first,
or when it first slides out
from between clouds
and we say it has
"returned."
But I should back up and explain
to the alien doctors
that we know it's wrong to be sentimental.
It means you're too easy on yourself
or you're an easy mark, maybe,
a pushover,
and we're brighter than that.
Look there!
RITUALS
1
In this now ancient ritual a succession of young women
are saucy,
which is to say they name common objects and relations
as if they had mastered them but shouldn't.
Each receives false approbation.
2
As Xmas sells winter to its prisoners.
As warmth feels like love;
and love is warmth only more capricious.
Fingers uncurl.
Organs expand and rise
toward a surface that must never
be broken.
THE TIMES
1
By "classical"
we mean the age
when the woods were haunted by near misses,
not-quite girls seen from the corner
of whose eye,
leaving branches
trembling or strangely still.
2
The journals for sale here no longer pretend
to be made from dead animals;
now it's strips of newsprint
and straw that are retro.
3
It's the flimsiness of the petals,
the way they're always open-shut
though nobody has seen them
move
EVIDENCE
Brittle, elevated track
a snail laid down on that flagstone,
its mysterious swerves.
* * *
When the cup tilts,
my eye appears at the bottom,
placid, singular.
* * *
I've "added a window to the world."
Believe it?
Look at these convincing shards.
* * *
The flagstone itself,
a jagged blue-
pink dawn
slab
HOUSES
What's lacking in the film version?
Worry bead lists,
descriptions
of imaginary feudal sigils.
* * *
Someone says it's an ugly universe with its
37 families of subatomic particles.
Sums should be evenly divisible.
* * *
Platonic forms:
floors and hallways
built of living ants
ALL SOULS
Pallid, thin-skinned potatoes bunched like grapes on yellow stems.
* * *
I can't remember my mother
or
This is not the mother I remember.
* * *
When asked if she's frightened,
the raped child whispers
that she is afraid of ghosts.
FUNCTIONS
1
We inquire about heaven as we might about a nursing home.
Will I get email there?
Will I have insights
and someone to be pleased with them?
Will that person be faking it?
Will she be under orders?
Will my words seem foreign?
2
"Twee, twee!"
some sound insists.
OUR WORLD
We'd been tweaking the poignancy
of small plots for how long?
* * *
We needed space,
perceived distance between thing and statement,
as if irony,
inflated,
might be a whole new globe.
* * *
The "Unique Cab"
is a yellow sedan.
More?
Say the window decals on the minivan
are two small skulls with bows floating above.
* * *
In our world,
scissors fly
around unheld, trim Cinderella's evening gown;
and freshly released virions
self-assemble inside the host
EPISODES
1
Two children travel to Australia in an instant with the aid of a magical dog,
really a witch,
and a book on the animals of the outback which race past —
as soon as the kids appear —
followed by predators that the boy and girl can name.
2
Hot comedy: "God of Carnage."
Having trouble viewing this?
3
In the opener,
a ramified tube
speaks of itself, to itself,
saying, "Not bad."
Excerpted from "Itself"
by .
Copyright © 2015 Rae Armantrout.
Excerpted by permission of Wesleyan University Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
ITSELF
Chirality
A Conceit
Split
Induction
Conclusion
Pitch
Price Points
Difference
Eden
Sonnet 3
Itself
Rooms
Bivouac
Material
Flo
The New irony
Sponsor
The Matter
Two and Two
Personhood
Friends
The Couple
Headlong
Fundamentals
MEMBRANE
Membrane
Keepers
Poem
Alignment
Habitat
The Wait
Occurrence
End User
Loop
Geography
Persistence
Place Mark
Believing
Head
Control
Difficulty
Rituals
The Times
Evidence
Houses
All Souls
Functions
Our World
Episodes
The Pull
You
LIVE THROUGH
Holiday
Glare
The Eye
The New Zombie
Live Through
Not
Kingdom
Kingdom 2 (a poetics)
Kilter
Expression
Afterlife
Blessed
Clearance
Cloudless
Home
The Score
Fall
Exit Row
Deep Time
Device
Lounge Area
New Way