Rae Armantrout's Versed, second selection

Here is a selection of passages from the second section/half of the book, titled "Dark Matter." Versed has entranced me with its meticulously honed lyricism and intelligence; I recommend it most highly.

Time is made from swatches

of heaven and hell.

If we're not killing it,

we're hungry.

last two stanzas of "Simple"

The impossible woman,

part igneous,

part surge.

from "Resounding"

Each actor's face

seems to have survived

the same brave battle

to remain in character.

They're posed

on the rubble

used to indicate

the past.

It turns out

this is heaven.

the second section of "The Racket"

In dreams, the words

speak themselves.

last stanza of "Left"

The spread

of vicious talent contests

mimics the selection

of those best adapted

to the stage

of service industry capitalism.

first section of "The Light"

The present

is a sentimental favorite,

with its heady mix

of grandiosity

and abjection,

truncated,

framed.

second section of "Apartment"

Once we believed the bees,

moving as attention does,

settling and lifting

from blue identicals,

were the picture

of eternity.

first section of "Still"

God was momentum then,

that impatience

with interruption,

from "Hoop"

I'm looking for a

heart to heart,

a rhyme

between the blankness of my

"my"

and the blue emptiness

second and final section of "Someone"

Rae Armantrout's Versed can be purchased from The Book Depository for just £7.24, with free shipping.

Rae Armantrout's Versed, first selection

While Rae Armantrout's reputation in the States is firmly established, she is not well known in the UK, so I'm going to post selections of her latest book, Versed (Wesleyan University Press, 2010), partly in the hope of attracting more readers on this side of the pond. Versed won both the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry last year.

The book is divided in two sections, Versed and Dark Matter. These selections all come from the first section. This is only a small selection of the excellent passages and poems--I had such a difficult time paring back what to share!

Metaphor forms

a crust

beneath which

the crevasse

of each experience.

from "Versed"

Day hoists its mesh

of near

approximations

(its bright

skein of pores).

from "Fetch"

Carried by light,

images remain

while sensation

is so evanescent

as to be always beyond

belief.

from "Outer"

Time flows

because no set

of proofs

can be complete.

from "Relations"

Songs as empathy

evacuation engines.

*

Any statement I issue,

if particular enough,

will prove

I was here

from "Locality"

Moment to

moment's stretched

plausibility.

from "Stretch"

Pathos

of strangers' headlights

tracing the curve at dusk

is inexplicable

the end of "Bonding"

Symbolism as the party face of paranoia.

Chorus of expert voices beyond my door, forever

dissecting my case.

"But the part is sick

of representing the whole."

from "Own"

Rae Armantrout's Versed can be purchased from The Book Depository for a mere £7.24, with free shipping.