Itself

by Rae Armantrout (contributor)

What do “self” and “it” have in common? In Rae Armantrout’s new poems, there is no inert substance. Self and it (word and particle) are ritual and rigmarole, song-and-dance and long distance call into whatever dark matter might exist. How could a self not be selfish? Armantrout accesses the strangeness of everyday occurrence with wit, sensuality, and an eye alert to underlying trauma, as in the poem "Price Points" where a man conducts an imaginary orchestra but "gets no points for originality." In their investigations of the cosmically mundane, Armantrout’s poems use an extraordinary microscopic lens—even when she’s glancing backwards from the outer reaches of space. An online reader’s companion is available at

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction

112 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 25, 2015

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

[Edita]

If self-love
were a mirage,

it would decorate
distance,

shimmer over
others’ eyes,

evaporate
on contact

[Bill Fletcher]

Pretty sure I didn't even begin to understand these poems but I still think they're magical.

[Liz Mc2]

I don’t even understand the blurb of this collection and I often found myself with no idea what to make of these poems. But understanding isn’t really why I’m reading more poetry. Very short lines, short poems, fragments or stanzas set together in conjunctions that often seemed to have no meaning. But sometimes an image or a connection sparked something in me. Here are two of those:

Afterlife

1

No longer needing sustenance
butterflies
go batty around the flowers.

———

You call that nice?

I call it haiku.

Sugared tea.

2

Poisoned on the job,
the mad hatter becomes
a bit of nonsense
in a story
for lucky children.


This made me laugh at first. But the ending takes a darker turn, doesn’t it?


Device

The observer
is a device

(used by whom?)

to shrink time
to “the present.”

——-

Remember “escapism?”

——-

In every mall,
World Market or Pier One

with their bins of
machine-dyed, glitter-drizzled

elephants.


In the end I liked reading something that challenged and resisted me.

[Ioan]

"Since I crop up
in sentences

Since I can see
through your eyes

Since I've been moved
into a mouse

in a cartoon
and then come back,

I can survive death"

[Jessica]

Wow--one of the most stunning collections of poetry I've read in a long time. I have no doubt I'll be returning to it often.

[mwpm]

I work it
until sweetness

rises
of itself,

then arc across,
unfurling petals,

and its gone.

*

On television hundreds
of albino crabs
scuffle
over one steam vent.

*

I know you're dreaming
things I haven't dreamed,

wouldn't. But that's part
of your costume

like your extra
appendages.
- Itself, pg. 17

In Itself, Armantrout concerns herself with "the new" in Western Culture. Specifically "the new" in the accelerated cultural climate of the twenty-first century. Fads... Trends... Lobotomies... Over-saturation... Short attentions spans... Viral videos... Intellectual depravity and spiritual bankruptcy...

1.

In the new irony,
particulars
are overdetermined,

dripping context,

while the big picture
remains obscure:

1940s pinup girls
in Brownie uniforms,

sizes too small,
rush

toward a blazing
office tower

so that rescue,
porn,
and nostalgia

converge.


2.

It was my understanding
that things would be
muffled,

remote
- The New Irony, pg. 22


1.

I stare at a faint
spinning disc

in the black
endlessly

ready to pounce.


2.

I actually say,

"I'm so sick
of zombies!"


3.

Viral relics
in the genome?

Genes that switch
themselves off

and on,

unthinking
but coordinated


4.

Zombie surfeit.

Half-off zombie.

The best zombie
imitation.

Invisible zombie
hand
- The New Zombie, pg. 22

In a number of the poems of Itself, Armantrout inserts phrases that are specific to a new language that has emerged in the wake of the internet. Not slang or abbreviation (such as "LOL" or "BRB"), but internet phrases that a bureaucratic specificity (that is ultimately dystopian)...

My username
is invalid
- End User, pg. 47

Having trouble viewing this?
- Episodes, pg. 66

One of my favourite poems (although I can't help but wonder why it is named "Geography" and not "Geometry")...

1.

Touch each chakra
in turn and say,

"Nothing shocks me."


2.

Watching bombs fall
on Syria,

we feel serious,

occupied,

not preoccupied
as we were

previously.


3.

"Makes me end
where I begun,"

wrote John Donne

turning love
into geometry.
- Geography, pg. 50

[Steven Godin]

Give me your spurt
of verbs,

your welter
of pronouns

desiring to be spread.

Bulge-eyed, clear-
bodied brine-shrimp

bobbing to the surface.

I prefer
the hermit, trundling off

in someone else's
exoskeleton —

but we all
come down,

to self-love,
self-love which,

like a virus,

has no love
and has no self

[Brendan]

A lot of poems that I didn't understand. Maybe smarter people will appreciate it more. She uses short lines though, so it's a fast-paced read.

Favorites:
"Alignment"
"Occurrence"

It takes an American
to do really big things.
- "Control"

[Rebecca Valley]

Lots of beautiful lines in this collection & I like the sparse style of these poems. I tend to not love the more Language-poety parts of this collection - the dangling sentences and poems that felt so dense I couldn’t wade through them if I tried. But so many poems sang here, it’s worth a read.

[void °❀⋆.ೃ࿔*]

a book in three sections;
- itself
- membrane
- living through

got me curious to read The Quantum Universe and reminded me to maybe start reading Hegel ...

chirality is a memorable poem, the first one!
first read very little sense was made. though with subsequent reads got easier

[Mary-Marcia]

spent time with "Itself" since May; yes deft and audacious -- her poetry bright up thoughts to focus

[Sarah Holder]

I just… didn’t get it.

[Rose Webb]

In the ongoing
concussion,

quick
Mobius strips

of bird song

fail to attach.

[Matthew]

5/5, loved it

[Sarkis Antonyan]

armantrout in this one is a zillennial joint roller. i can’t imagine time helping any of these poems out, but next go around i’ll read this with some wine

[Steve Chisnell]

Oblique? Obtuse? An extreme juxtaposition of the micro and universe? A heavy-handed deferment of referents? Yup. All of this, sometimes set to be obtuse, to deliberately obfuscate so that readers do not know fully (or with any familiarity) where they are, all while dropping loosely-assembled verse minimally on each page.

Much of the poetry is off-putting, to be sure. Once or twice I imagined a 1970s scene of teenagers passing around a joint and riffing these stanzas.

And yet there is much to Armantrout's work, even then, to admire. Here are speakers searching for connections, something meaningful between a stray hand gesture and a neutron star, between words which distantly resonate in likeness, between a memory and micron. Occasionally, even, they're found.

[Patti K]

A new book of poetry by the prolific Armantrout again pleases. Her work
is an intelligent inquiry into both ordinary and extraordinary worlds.
Word play is a key element as she is both playful and witty. Here is
a slight poem to give an example: "Habitat" Habitat-themed enclosure./
Zen-inflected mug./ /Around the block/dogs bark at absence. She is always
asking the reader to wonder and wander in the language and realities. Good.

[Justin Evans]

I accept that there's no objectivity in this review whatsoever. I like poems that are smart, that I can think about, and that actually give me something to think about--and that aren't simply reports of some asshat's emotions at time x and place y. Voila. Armantrout does it.

[Cat]

4.5
Definitely need to revisit this

pretty brilliant

[Harry Palacio]

These poems are spellbinding and eternally there… “if you move far enough away you will see me writing these words always”

[Al]

This was fantastic!