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Versed
Rae Armantrout has always organized her collections of poetry as though they were works in themselves. Versed brings two of these sequences together, offering readers an expanded view of the arc of her writing. The poems in the first section, Versed, play with vice and versa, the perversity of human consciousness. They flirt with error and delusion, skating on a thin ice t...more
Hardcover, 121 pages
Published
February 1st 2009
by Wesleyan University Press
(first published January 30th 2009)
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At the onset of reading Versed, it is a bit like driving parallel to a midsize city on a highway. The neon signs are beautiful, but what do they convey? Is that a fast-food restaurant or a strip club just below? As you take the exit the images come into focus. Oh, that's a hospital! That's the light of a television in a motel room.
Versed is comprised of 2 sections; Versed and Dark Matter. Dark Matter is the more accessible of the two sections. The poems play with the reader and draw them in with...more
Versed is comprised of 2 sections; Versed and Dark Matter. Dark Matter is the more accessible of the two sections. The poems play with the reader and draw them in with...more
I don't despise it, but it does make me hate poetry. Everyone around me hates poetry, and I'm always defending it. Then this comes along, winning both Pulitzer and NBCC Award, and I want to go have a beer with dockworkers (I don't know any dockworkers) and talk about sports.
I would describe it as minimalist non sequitur--fragments of everyday speech, keywords from critical theory and contemporary science, pop culture winks, ordinary (as if overheard) phrases in quotation marks, and some spillage...more
I would describe it as minimalist non sequitur--fragments of everyday speech, keywords from critical theory and contemporary science, pop culture winks, ordinary (as if overheard) phrases in quotation marks, and some spillage...more
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National Book Award Finalist
2010 Pulitzer Prize winner for Poetry
Versed by Rae Armantrout made me feel pretty ignorant (more than usual anyway!). I know that her work has always been highly respected, but when I first picked it up, I just didn’t get it. A few phrases, here and there, would resonate, but then the lines would go off the track I imagined they were on. I’m fine with stream-of-consciousness writing, but that doesn’t describe it either. Quite simply, I was lost. I put the collection...more
2010 Pulitzer Prize winner for Poetry
Versed by Rae Armantrout made me feel pretty ignorant (more than usual anyway!). I know that her work has always been highly respected, but when I first picked it up, I just didn’t get it. A few phrases, here and there, would resonate, but then the lines would go off the track I imagined they were on. I’m fine with stream-of-consciousness writing, but that doesn’t describe it either. Quite simply, I was lost. I put the collection...more
The idea that Rae Armantrout's work is difficult is, as has been remarked about "Ulysses", is made too much of. There are items, phrases, condensed cadences and references that need to be parsed, examined, considered thoughtfully , but as with Joyce's musicality , wit and sensuality, there is a tangible presence in Rae's work with which a reader can frame their own response. It's an old distinction that one notices in the best voices--the emphasis is more on creating a sense of things rather tha...more
2 likes · like · see review
Weird, because I actually love this book LESS than Armantrout's other works. It's too long, for one...the kind of synaptic crackle of aural/verbal association between poems that happens in her other work, emphasized through her books' brevity, seems diluted here. Armantrout's prose blocks don't really work here either (they seem 'minor'), and her exasperated / rhapsodic tone actually grates every now and then. All in all, though, this is STILL far better, sweeter, and intelligent writing compare...more
I am absolutely in love with this book and will be back to write a review. This is the one that won the 2010 Pulitzer in Poetry. I'd always thought I wouldn't like Armantrout because she's . . . well, a language poet, right? And then I heard her read at AWP in February. And I was amazed. It felt as though I'd just woken up to poetry again after a long nap.
Ron Silliman has said:
“Trying to read a book by Rae Armantrout in a single sitting is like trying to drink a bowl of diamonds. What’s inside i...more
Ron Silliman has said:
“Trying to read a book by Rae Armantrout in a single sitting is like trying to drink a bowl of diamonds. What’s inside i...more
NB: "I don't get it! The Mono-Culture is the hegemony of the vulgar. The cry of "I don't understand it!" almost inevitably qualifies as an authoritative dismissal of any work at hand. Cultural authority has gone into complete reverse: once the most articulate, educated, thoughtful person in the room was the one to listen to; now the biggest vulgarian rules." -- Mark Edmundson, "Notes on the Mono-Culture" (p. 36), (The Massachusetts Review, Vol. L, Nos. 1 & 2, Spring/Summer 2009)
Is the reader...more
Is the reader...more
The GR description of this Pulitzer Prize book of verse is more complete that I can write. My experience of poetry is limited so I am not a good judge of what makes poetry award-winning.
I did not like the first section of this free though-roaming verse. I could not grasp the subject or thread that held any of it within a frame. None of it spoke to me and I was left wondering if I would be able to finish the book.
However, the second part of the book "Dark Matter" was a different experience. In th...more
I did not like the first section of this free though-roaming verse. I could not grasp the subject or thread that held any of it within a frame. None of it spoke to me and I was left wondering if I would be able to finish the book.
However, the second part of the book "Dark Matter" was a different experience. In th...more
Almost maddeningly compelling and addicting. Quiet, enigmatic and at the same time explosive and direct. The paradox of Rae Armantrout's spare poetry lies in her clever manipulation of the colloquial phrase, the overheard-from-TV non-sequitur or the absurd-when-out-of-context term of art. This collection, comprised of "Versed" and "Dark Matter", is a masterful study of the dialectically opposed -- the real and unreal, temporal and eternal, material and abstract, metaphor and object. Often referr...more
I love it when a Pulitzer Committee knows what it's doing! I've been loving this poet's writing since 1980something or other. I've read this book about sixty times so far, and the variant readings each poem affords could fill this house with thousands of other books. When Keats wrote about Negative Capability, this is what he meant. When Mallarme told us that a throw of the dice would NEVER abolish chance, this is the infinitely renewable resource towards which he was beckoning. This poet invent...more
Took me some time--nearly half the collection--to acclimate to her style, predominately the way she divides poems into seemingly/apparently arbitrary sections. But the images she presents are displayed with a steady hand; she knows when to just let a scene stand--to pose for its own photograph, smiling the smile it chooses. And the fine-tuning her vertical line necessitates is present is a quiet, almost masterful way. Perhaps her skill in this regard seems enhanced when compared with Graham Fous...more
Armantrout won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 2010 and in this book of poems she explores both human consciousness and the unseen matter that accounts for mass in our universe, two technically difficult subjects to grasp in any capacity. Her poems are sparse and abstract, her focus clearly more on language than on perception. She compares in style to that of painter Mark Rothko, her workings at first appear bare and unknowable, though upon lingering a deeper meaning emerges. Armantrout is defi...more
One of the very best books by this incredible poet. I tried hard to read it slowly, but it wasn't easy to do that -- the jagged words and the crags of insight carved with them are so compelling as to demand page-turning.
Check this out:
"The spread / of vicious talent contests / mimics the selection / of those best adapted / to the stage / of service industry capitalism."
Amazing enough on its own, but then the next stanza is:
"One tells the story / of his illness / in such a way / as to make the o...more
Check this out:
"The spread / of vicious talent contests / mimics the selection / of those best adapted / to the stage / of service industry capitalism."
Amazing enough on its own, but then the next stanza is:
"One tells the story / of his illness / in such a way / as to make the o...more
Armantrout, like fellow early-langpo poet Lyn Hejinian, has kind of mellowed out with age and become less formally experimental. However, while Hejinian has gotten pretty cozy in her narrative cul-de-sac, Armantrout is still working with poetry as, most importantly, a field of linguistic play. She's really found a nice balance. Obviously, to garner a Pulitzer, she's writing stuff with very popular appeal, but it's still inventive and daring. I like her more recent book, 'Money Shots,' a bit more...more
Darn it, I only half-understood, half-felt it, was half-there.
But I swam through this verrrrryyyy slowly (2 weeks!), and stayed the whole time -- which says that there was something human here, something worth listening to. Other reviewers have mentioned "parcels" -- and yes, these stanzas felt more like packets than verse -- and the ease and wisdom of each let me want to thread connections between them.
Moved often. Here's the last instance: (p.121):
The full force
of the will to live
is fixed
on...more
But I swam through this verrrrryyyy slowly (2 weeks!), and stayed the whole time -- which says that there was something human here, something worth listening to. Other reviewers have mentioned "parcels" -- and yes, these stanzas felt more like packets than verse -- and the ease and wisdom of each let me want to thread connections between them.
Moved often. Here's the last instance: (p.121):
The full force
of the will to live
is fixed
on...more
One great poem: http://greysparrowpress.sharepoint.co...
Simple
for Aaron Korkegian
Complex systems can arise
from simple rules.
It’s not
that we want to survive,
it’s that we’ve been drugged
and made to act
as if we do
while all the while
the sea breaks
and rolls, painlessly, under.
If we’re not copying it,
we’re lonely.
Is this the knowledge
that demands to be
passed down?
Time is made from swatches
of heaven and hell.
If we’re not killing it,
we’re hungry.
Simple
for Aaron Korkegian
Complex systems can arise
from simple rules.
It’s not
that we want to survive,
it’s that we’ve been drugged
and made to act
as if we do
while all the while
the sea breaks
and rolls, painlessly, under.
If we’re not copying it,
we’re lonely.
Is this the knowledge
that demands to be
passed down?
Time is made from swatches
of heaven and hell.
If we’re not killing it,
we’re hungry.
This collection really frustrated me. I felt like I'd been invited to a friend's house expecting to come in, take off my shoes and have some tea. Instead I was left out on the front porch knocking. Every now and again it seemed like the door opened a crack only to shut again the next moment. I'm reasonably intelligent and well-read and even with some effort I couldn't make heads nor tails out of most of these poems.
Knowing that Armantrout is a "language poet" doesn't help much, it only makes me...more
Knowing that Armantrout is a "language poet" doesn't help much, it only makes me...more
Rae Armantrout, Versed (Wesleyan, 2009)
I have no idea what's wrong with me these days. I seem to have strayed far, far from the path where poetry is concerned. A couple of weeks ago I picked up W. S. Merwin's most recent Pulitzer Prizewinner, and I found it, to be short, dull as dishwater and twice as murky. Now I find myself having recently finished Rae Armantrout's Versed, not only a Pulitzer winner but also a National Book Critics Circle Award winner, and once again I find myself wondering wh...more
I have no idea what's wrong with me these days. I seem to have strayed far, far from the path where poetry is concerned. A couple of weeks ago I picked up W. S. Merwin's most recent Pulitzer Prizewinner, and I found it, to be short, dull as dishwater and twice as murky. Now I find myself having recently finished Rae Armantrout's Versed, not only a Pulitzer winner but also a National Book Critics Circle Award winner, and once again I find myself wondering wh...more
Armantrout's poems start externally, and, as silly as it sounds, ask us to pause at components: the title, each stanza, a line, a break, a quotation. For some of the pieces in "Versed," this is too much work to give, and the juxtaposition and context spin too thin a web. "Dark Matter" is on the whole stronger, with the particles concentrating into more substantive shapes. The humanized work here disturbs would what otherwise be a dehumanized affair. Only a few of the poems feel particularly stre...more
cells. jargon and advertising claims. querulous comments and television excerpts. People sick in hospitals. Catchphrases and dreary wordplay. more cells. and occasional insight. actually just one, in "Vehicles":
If "that" (head-on car crash)
had happened, we say,
all this
would not have been--
like "having been"
were a lasting thing
Ladies and gentleman, your Pulitzer Prize!
If "that" (head-on car crash)
had happened, we say,
all this
would not have been--
like "having been"
were a lasting thing
Ladies and gentleman, your Pulitzer Prize!
I love language poets. LOVE them. As far as I'm concerned they always get top of the class. But I will still admit that at least 15% of this book went straight over my head. My problem, not hers. I loved it. I kept forcing people to read passages, and scribbling down others when no one was around to bug. Now I'm a little reluctant to give it back to the library. Rae Armantrout summed it up herself in Fade,
So much happiness
is caged
in language,
ready
to burst out
anytime
and fade
THIS is how you earn y...more
So much happiness
is caged
in language,
ready
to burst out
anytime
and fade
THIS is how you earn y...more
These were difficult poems to me, and I didn't understand most of them. Perhaps it was just me. But her collection Money Shot also left me confused about what I just read. This is worth another read some time in 2012. It won many awards, so I want to find out better how to enjoy it.
Well, these weren't for me, it turns out. For the most part I felt like whole poems were split down the middle and all that was left were incomprehensible halves. There were lines here and there that really stood out, and the poem "Previews" I liked a lot, but for the most part I felt like I didn't get it.
I knew Rae back when, and she always had a magical way to extract something ironic and glaringly shining from an ordinary encounter. This book, this journey, stretched her into a new and much larger realm than the moment. Well done, girlfriend. Be strong.
A lovely articulation of the spaces-and-states-between, the un-sayable. I don't think of the language as "terse" so much as "rigorously refined"; there is not an extra ounce of fat on this book, and yet it is as sonically logical and sound as the sounds water makes. Just marvelous.
Versed explores both broad and personal topics in this work of astonishing range. The first half of this collection explores violence and contemporary society while the second half narrows in focus as Rae Armantrout chronicles her struggles with cancer. This darkly honest poetry is a touchstone to the human experience and provides the reader with a whole new range of questions to ponder.
I didn't understand the poetry. I prefer concrete poetry. Poetry with understandable images. This was too out there for me. It may have won the Pulitzer, but I don't like it. I didn't understand it.
See NBCC Board Member James Marcus's review at Critical Mass, as part of 30 Books in 30 Days: http://bookcritics.org/blog/archive/3...
This is one of the most stunning books of poetry I have read. I completed it in one sitting on the patio of a sea side coffee shop on a warm August night. Perfection.
one of the critics state that this author is "one of the most brilliant poetic minds," but I dare to disagree. this is a strong collection, and her merit speaks loudly in her experimentation with line, verse, and form. However, few pieces in this book screamed out to me their importance.
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Rae Armantrout (born 13 April 1947) is an American poet generally associated with the Language poets. Armantrout was born in Vallejo, California but grew up in San Diego. She has published ten books of poetry and has also been featured in a number of major anthologies. Armantrout currently teaches at the University of California, San Diego, where she is Professor of Poetry and Poetics.
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“But here I hold your dream in my poem.”
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