March 6, 2011
“Describing Pulitzer Prize-winner Rae Armantrout’s poetry means attempting to condense work that is already piano-wire taut . . . The relationship to song in her poetry is similar to that in a Thelonious Monk composition. Rhyme and rhythm are at work, very intelligent, unexpected, but the music is interior—to read her poetry is to overhear the sound of thought.
It is her custom to use within her poems language from sources outside of herself, placing voices in quotation marks without attribution, reflecting our information-besotted age. For instance, this wonderfully odd phrase likely taken from financial reporting — ‘the risk / of a bubble bursting / should be reflected / in the price . . .’ A delightful find, well worth preserving.
So much is going on in each of her poems that just to present one seems the best way to approach an understanding of her work. Before we do so, we want to announce that Rae Armantrout will be reading at Open Books on Sunday, May 15, at 3 pm. And now a poem, in its entirety:”
“Vest”
Now the horizon
is pale blue.
We grab at it
spasmodically
with two
bags in our chests.
*
If we can inhale/
exhale with perfect
regularity,
it will seem
like we don’t need
air at all,
but, rather,
are caught up
in a simple rhythm,
want to hear it out.
Perhaps a movement
so continuous
is not
really an act,
but a braided
strand—
a waterfall.
*
Blow into the tube
to inflate the
John Marshall, Open Books: A Poem Emporium, Seattle