Up to Speed

Corrosive new poems from a poet whose work challenges expectations.

Rae Armantrout's most recent collection of poems focuses on the phenomenon of time, both as lived experience at the start of the 21st century and as a stubborn mystery confronting physicists and philosophers. The poems in this book are polyphonic: they juxtapose the discourses of science and religion, Hollywood and the occasional psychotic stranger. The title poem, which appears in Best American Poetry 2002, leads off with a "sphinx" asking "Does a road / run its whole length / at once? / Does a creature / curve to meet / itself?" Armantrout's work, with its careful syntax bordering on plain speech and meticulously scored short lines, is always struggling with the problem of consciousness, its blindspots and double-binds. The poems whirl like shifting and scattered pieces of the present moment. They attempt to "make sense" of our lives while acknowledging the depth of our self-deception and deception.

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
Published: 02/03/2004
ISBN: 9780819566980
Pages: 80
Weight: 0.30lbs
Size: 8.92h x 5.98w x 0.26d

Review Citations: Publishers Weekly 12/22/2003 pg. 54