Just Saying

by Rae Armantrout

Deft and deeply intelligent poems on the nature of language

In Just Saying, improbable and even untenable speakers are briefly constituted―only to disappear. The result is part carnival, part nightmare. A television pundit's rhetoric segues into an unusual succulent with writhing maroon tongues. When the world suddenly becomes legible, is that revelation or psychosis? In this book, the voice of the Lord and/or the voice of the security state can come from anyplace. The problem of identity becomes acute. The poems in Just Saying may be imagined as chimeras, creatures that appear when old distinctions break down and elements generally kept separate combine in new ways. Here Armantrout both worries (as a dog worries a bone) and celebrates the groundless fecundity of being and of language.

Genres: Poetry, 21st Century

120 pages, Hardcover

First published February 19, 2013

About the author

Rae Armantrout 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.

On March 11, 2010, Armantrout was awarded the 2009 National Book Critics Circle Award for her book of poetry Versed published by the Wesleyan University Press, which had also been nominated for the National Book Award. The book later earned the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Armantrout’s most recent collection, Money Shot, was published in February 2011. She is the recipient of numerous other awards for her poetry, including most recently an award in poetry from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts in 2007 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2008.

Reviews

[Steven Godin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Suffer as in allow.

List as in want.

Listless as in transcending
desire, or not rising
to greet it.

To list
is to lean,
dangerously,
to one side.

Have you forgotten?

Spent
as in exhausted.

[Antonia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read Just Saying quickly, but marked many pages to return to. First off, I love the title. I only wish I’d thought of it first. Just saying: What we say when we want to make a point and yet maintain a light, inoffensive tone. I feel as if Armantrout is saying “Here’s something I happened to notice. Have you noticed that? Have you been thinking the same thing? Is this perhaps something we should keep in mind?” At the same time, the title calls to mind WCW’s “This is just to say.” In both cases, the point is in saying it. We all write poems just to say, don’t we?

What I love about Armantrout is that the reader is necessarily involved in the poem making. You have to read between lines, fill in the blanks, and connect the dots. Certain lines leap off the page and grab me. Others send me back to the beginning of the poem. I always feel immersed, part of the poem, as if looking around it from inside it. As if. A phrase that Armantrout uses a lot.

As if the light
at the end of
tunnel vision
were the glare
of the delivery room
pulled
from memory’s
grab bag;

as if we’d come
full circle,
so to speak, though
this time
no one was talking
— from “Things”


I also admire the way two or more voices may be braided together in a single poem. Sometimes they are the voices of government, media, a sign in the airport, the clichés of modern life — the way they capture and play off our collective experience. And sometimes they’re internal voices arguing with, or colluding with, one another — perhaps both at once.

The poems, taken together, offer a portrait of life in the 21st century, one in which we still have choices (but may not always) and yet are bewildered and stymied by them. No matter what we choose, will the result be tolerable? According to which of our many selves? The one in real time? The one who listens in on our interior monologue? Perhaps the one who knows that the sense of choice is only that: the sense of it.

Serious themes, yes. But delivered with the most delightful wordplay, with all the subtleties of sound and sense we find in our best poetry. Some WCW, a little e.e., and a dash of Kay Ryan. Armantrout herself has said: “[P]oetry, at least the poetry I value, can reproduce our conflicts and fractures and yet be held together in the ghost embrace of assonance and consonance, in the echoed and echoing body of language.” (Collected Prose, Singing Horse Press, 2007)

The power of language is ever present. Before I started reading Armantrout, I’d heard she was a “language poet,” and I already believed I didn’t “like” language poetry. Fortunately, I heard her read at an AWP meeting some years ago and had my little closed mind blown. Reading Armantrout makes me feel as if I’ve been going about my life in a daze. Every poem seems like a wake-up call. “What is the meaning of clarity? Armantrout asks. “Is something clear when you understand it or when it looms up, startling you?” (Collected Prose, Singing Horse Press, 2007)


If we think dying
is like falling
 
asleep,
then we believe
 
wrongly, rightly
that it’s a way
 
of sinking into
what happens,

joining the program
in process

— from “Progress”

Ange Mlinko has called Armantrout’s poetry incisive and chilling. I have to agree. And would add ironic, skeptical, provocative, wry, and witty.

But in the end, as in the last lines of the last poem in this collection,

everything’s

a metaphor
for sensation.

— from “Stop and Go”

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 5 out of 5]

What might be said

to disport itself

along the cinderblock

in leaves.

*

What I write

I write instead

of ivy.

*

Green snouts

in evidence or -

more

to the point -

insolent

and tense.

*

What might be said

to writhe

professionally

as the days

nod and wink.
- Just Saying, pg. 11-12

Many of Armantrout's poems, particularly in Just Saying (or perhaps this particularity is limited to my recent recognition of this trend in Armantrout's writing), use "as if" in what may be considered an anti-simile. Rather than compare one thing to another to make a description more emphatic or vivid (as in the traditional simile) Armantrout uses "as if" first ("as") to compare one thing to another, and then ("as if") to remind us that one thing is not another...

1

He grabbed the doctor's finger
with his eyes
and he was going for a ride,
whipped back and forth,
for the first time
like a like a
Or was this digit
one of the things -
but what are those -
he had been sent
to find?

2

It is one thing
to say that experience
is discontinuous
and another
to say that it is
imaginary
at both ends.

3

As if the light
at the end of
tunnel vision
were the glare
of the delivery room
pulled
from memory's
grab bag;

as if we'd come
full circle,
so to speak, through
this time
no one was talking
- Things, pg. 33-34


We're all saying the same thing now,

scolding the same shadow,

not in harmony,
but in sync

or by turns.

Singing that bar
about the flock
taking off

"as if"
it were one body -

as if this was one body -

and who could be listening?
- Midst, pg. 52


"Poetry wants
to make things mean

more than they mean,"
says someone,

as if we knew
how much things meant

and in what unit
of measure.
- Meant, pg. 98

Counter to this technique that stresses the importance of one thing being recognized as itself and nothing else ("In dreams / things are understood // (to be) as / they appear" - Entry, pg. 36), Armantrout uses a technique that incorporates substitution first to present something recognizable, and then to reframe that recognizable object by substituting one of the words ("On screen / men discover / that their mothers / are imposters, / that their world's / unreal. // Substitution / is eerie." - Action Poems, 1, pg. 46)...

"It's alright" and

"It doesn't matter."

Let "it" stand
for nothing.
- My Apocalypse, pg. 32


The Alphas, The Incredibles, The X-Men,
characters with freak abilities
are being suppressed,
regulated,
in the name of society,
until, finally,
they break out, use
their power
as the please.

Now, for "ability"
read wealth.
- Coming Out, 1, pg. 61


"There is no obstacle

to appropriate types

of information processors

continuing to process

information."

*

"Process" meaning register;

register meaning process.

*

"Or more simply

they could process

infinite amounts

of information

in an unbounded future."

*

Process meaning separate;

process meaning fuse,

*

Coral

feather-duster

glowers

of the eucalyptus

hang among

gray-greens.

*

"Which is not to say

that they would

or should."
- Without End, pg. 75-76

[Bj Barker · Rating 4 out of 5]

On the whole, I think Armantrout's collection is very refreshing. The tone that carries though-out is one that I find in line with the title. The speaker often breaks from the aloof treatment of ideas common in contemporary poetry and makes blunt, unapologetic observations. The work contains an interesting voice that slants towards the scientific, but is sparsely populated with delightful breaks into daily speech. This book consists of short clips of stoicism and animism, high and low diction, and varying levels of energy that make every poem seem like an interjection among the rest. The impressive thing is how equally the topics seem to be tenderly examined among these interjections. These poems simply ask questions of life, death, status, intention, and otherwise. Very sparse on imagery and scene, a heavily conceptual work that none the less delivers.

(Only a couple mythology references too, which is rare among Armantrout's company)

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thought you followed
someone else's thought,
thought you saw
where it was going
or, if not, could
hold the expected
turn
and the actual trajectory
side by side
for an instant

thus:

a shadow,
"Pleasantly surprised."

"Thus"

If I reveal myself
mercilessly,

what will I not transcend?

*
Like God, I will leave

an arc
of implication

"Mother's Day"

This was my first foray into Rae Armantrout's poetry. At times I was frustrated with the skeletal structures, the non sequitur stanzaic constructions: "What is this supposed to mean? What am I missing to make sense of this?" After a slow run through each poem in the collection, I discerned the work is not a "collection" of individual pieces, but pieces arranged as a whole. It's all one poem. And, while I have difficulty articulating the experience--best described using Armantrout's description of God the Creator as "an arc of implication"--I return to passages over and over to reflect on their beauty or emotion or, at rare moments, meaning.

This train of thought
is not a train,

but a tendril,
blind.

It's a line
of ants
following a scent trail.

Or a string of stragglers
on a death march.

"At Least"

Think of this collection as a fractal: Words are placed alongside words which create baffling, at times conflicting, meanings. Then sentences are placed similarly; then stanzas repeat the pattern; then whole poems are set one against another. Armantrout likes to find poetic pieces in her notebooks and place them against other pieces from elsewhere; often, she's uncertain if the tenuous connection she believes they have actually exists between two sentences, between two stanzas. She strategically arranges her resulting poems similarly, one against the other. The entire work echoes the structure of its component parts. It's frustrating at times because Armantrout winnows her words so thoroughly there seems no narrator present. The reader must struggle to make connections. The effort is worthwhile and rewarding.

What really got me was how Armantrout maintains a poetic reflection on God, poetry, and existence while maintaining a respectful distance. She allows the juxtaposition, the odd combinations, do a tremendous amount of heavy lifting. She isn't "just saying," she's singing. When we come to the final poems, music becomes a motif. The final poem, "Stop and Go," provides an excellent stop for this collection:

1.
Long burst of tweets.

We wait to see
if it picks up again

from the same place --

the place we came from?

2.
Stop,
I know this one.

It goes
everything's

a metaphor
for sensation.

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

These were delightful!

I’m pretty sure missed most of what they were doing, but they were fun and bright to read. I’m not sure why the library thought they were apocalyptic but maybe that was some of the stuff that went over my head.

[Estep · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fell out of the habit of reading poetry. After this collection I'm back. Baby.

Found this by way of a Lydia Davis essay.

[Darius · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5⭐️

[Cooper Renner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Over the past couple of weeks, I've rereading this, in bits--several poems every few days. This procedure doesn't, obviously, allow to get a feel for the book and how it might or might not flow as a whole, but it does renew my interest in her work and provides enjoyment once again. I would almost call these poems "light verse," not in an attempt to diminish them (I like light verse), but rather to indicate that there is an immense sense of good humor and delight in many of them, even if they deal with "serious" subjects. I find these poems much more successful than Kay Ryan's.

This is my first purchase of Armantrout, though I've been thinking about her for a while. The book isn't uniformly good, of course--books of lyrics neve are--but there is a great deal to enjoy here, more than one has any right to expect. Her poems are at their best not explications or explorations of experience--as is usual--but rather embodiments of experience. They are themselves the encounter with the reader. Could I "explain" or paraphrase them, at their best? No. And that is all to the good. The weaker poems--of which there are more toward the end--perhaps make one think of Kay Ryan in some ways, but Ryan is much more mainstream, much more commentative.

[World Literature Today]

"The sixty-seven poems of Just Saying tend toward short titles (often announcing a field of inquiry), short lines, and short, fragmentary sections that form (to borrow from George Oppen) discrete series, inviting the reader to consider oblique relations among parts." - Michael Leddy, Eastern Illinois University

This book was reviewed in the November 2013 issue of World Literature Today. Read the full review by visiting our website: http://bit.ly/1i3ZigO

[David Miller · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think I enjoyed myself a lot more often than I understood what was going on, which is probably a good sign. I don't think reading a poem over a few times is a bad reading experience. But consequently, I'm having a difficult time articulating what this book is about. Probably it isn't about anything, but I'm not making any guarantees. In any case it is enjoyable, and fairly often comprehensible, so I think it could be worth your time.

[Patti K · Rating 4 out of 5]

A new collection of poems by Armantrout is always a treat. She is mostly a
language poet and plays with words in astounding ways. Sometimes even
profoundly. A confident, clever poet who makes puzzles the reader is
urged to discover.

[Leonard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Latest collection of brisk, compact poems by the Pulitzer Prize winner from a couple years ago. I wasn't especially overwhelmed by her poetry, but my curiosity has been stimulated and I will read more of her work.

[Renee · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pulitzer winner and noted language poet. Yet to me, these poems are like psychotic ravings.

"Let's not rationalize taste!" (Pg 62)

I am relieved to like her poems on poets.org more than I do the poems in this collection.

[Cee Spind · Rating 3 out of 5]

Feeling it more than the Ronk--but can't string together other than brief flashes of images why.

[Amy · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is simply not my style of poetry. The power, narrative, and lyricism of my favorite poets is nowhere to be found here.

[Mette · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very beautiful.

[Mike Hammer · Rating 3 out of 5]

a solid collection, some witty phrases and beautiful lines - but many of the poems just seem like incomplete observations