Rae Armantrout's Next Life (Wesleyan University Press, 2007), second selection

Some favourite passages....



A promise that can only be kept
by being made and made again

last lines of "Promise"

The dream--a froth

of syllables and lights.

A lost

girl, cross

section of a girl,

who floats on the surface

tension between bed

rock 

and rising.

last section of "In Part"

As planets and protons

invent themselves by spinning,

so a mind

turns on itself

in a body's dark space

last section of "Pronouncements"

And someone will here set down

a diner or gas station

at a desolate crossroads

and tried naming it

to evoke

the whole human situation

while

satirizing

the impulse to do so

What that name will be

is the one thing we don't know

end of "Make It New"

We ought to be frightened

of the reconstituted

pronominal fizz

that invades us,

the waverly, weasely persistence

which, once we start to listen,

demands to be heard

end of "Again"

The present's chronic

revision

which a poem

reenacts.

from "Yoohoo"

When we wish for anything,

we also wish

for time to pass.

From this

we can infer

that time and wish are one

substance

or that we have caused them

to become enmeshed.

third section of "Propensity"