Monday 3 June 2013

Rae Armantrout's Money Shot (Wesleyan University Press, 2011)

Some favourite passages:


Light is the wail of atoms
pressed to touch.

It is reluctance

raised
to absolute velocity

end of "Across"


Here are the young
again,

sniping and giggling,

tingly
as ringing phones.

*

The fear
that all this
will end.

The fear
that it won't.

from "Prayers" 



To come to
in the middle

of a vibrato--
an "is"--

that some soprano's

struggling
to sustain.

the first section of "Sustained"


If good is the all-enduring
intention
that carries you
to the future,

evil is the present's
animal magnetism.

from "Homer"


In the moment of experience,
one may drown
while another looks on.

end of "Autobiography: Urn Burial"


We think the gesture
must come first,

the body follows
by remaining.

first section of "Following"


I write things down
to show others
later
or to show myself
I am not alone with
my experience.

the second section of "With"


In heaven,

where repetition's
not boring--

from "Duration"


To start over
in the carved moment
is to take cover.

*

There are two kinds
of choices,

pirate sources say:

unconscious
and desperate.

second and fourth sections of "Procedures"


If you love me,
worship

the objects
I have caused

to represent me
in my absence.

from "Exact"


Unite my heart,
beaten small

in the secret place
of thunder.

last two stanzas of "Objection"


Rival news hours
mime discovery.

*

In heaven
the soul is sheltered

from the expanse 
of time.

It contracts
to a point
of light

or spreads out 
"all along" 
like a wave.

from "Along"


Money is talking
to itself again

in this season's
bondage
and safari look....

the opening stanzas of "Money Talks"