Rae Armantrout has always organized her collections of poetry as though they were works in themselves. Versed brings two of these sequences together, offering readers an expanded view of the arc of her writing. The poems in the first section, Versed, play with vice and versa, the perversity of human consciousness. They flirt with error and delusion, skating on a thin ice that inevitably cracks: "Metaphor forms / a crust / beneath which / the crevasse of each experience." Dark Matter, the second section, alludes to more than the unseen substance thought to make up the majority of mass in the universe. The invisible and unknowable are confronted directly as Armantrout's experience with cancer marks these poems with a new austerity, shot through with her signature wit and stark unsentimental thinking. Together, the poems of Versed part us from our assumptions about reality, revealing the gaps and fissures in our emotional and linguistic constructs, showing us ourselves where we are most exposed. A reader's companion is available at http://versedreader.site.wesleyan.edu/
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. In recent years, Armantrout's reputation has soared—she began in the '70s as an obscure, early practitioner of language poetry, and now her poems regularly appear in the New Yorker. Her new book comprises two sequences—Versed and Dark Matter—of loosely interlinked poems dealing with the prolific poet's usual subjects (the body, contemporary society, violence) as well as more personal explorations of illness and mortality, all relayed in Armantrout's concentrated, crystalline voice, with a predilection for skipping some steps along the way to sense. The first sequence, peppered with pop culture references and quoted speech, features silly yet surprisingly serious poems on topics like '[b]reaking/ Anna Nicole news// as she buries/ her son.' In the playful Scumble, the poet speculates as to What if I were turned on by seemingly innocent words/ such as... 'extrapolate?' The second section, Dark Matter, is evasively intimate and occasionally, albeit characteristically, bleak, as Armantrout (Next Life) contemplates her own struggle with cancer with a shocked smile,/ while an undiscovered tumor/squats on her kidney. In what may be moments of intense, sardonic honesty—Chuck and I are pleased/ to have found a spot/where my ashes can be scattered—the poet poses metaphysical questions with open endings: jarring moments in which the stakes are suddenly, impossibly high. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
"Trying to read a book by Rae Armantrout in a single sitting is like trying to drink a bowl of diamonds. What's inside is all so shiny & clear & even tiny that it appears perfectly do-able. But the stones are so hard & their edges so chiseled that the instant you begin they'll start to rip your insides apart."--Ron Silliman, blog
"Rae Armantrout is the most philosophical sort of poet, continually seeking in her collections to summon and surmise the contemporary character of subjective experience and, further, to test the limits of knowledge. ... Armantrout's writing in her latest volume, Versed, will thus be familiar to her longtime readers for its way of holding meaning (and identification) in uneasy suspension. Short lines in brief poems are polyvalent in both voicing and implication, inviting multiple readings. ...yet pleasure arises in contemplating both the options and the paradox."--Tom Griffin, Bookforum
"Armantrout's poetry has always been turned to the present moment. Its formal lineage is from William Carlos Williams and the Objectivists, with their enjambments of modern experience. ... Poetically, Armantrout has always aimed at knowing life by isolating it from narrative. Written under a diagnosis of cancer ("'I just called / to fill you in'"), Versed is a major and moving addition to a life's work in many-angled reflection."--Jeremy Noel-Tod, Times Literary Supplement
"Rae Armantrout is the most philosophical sort of poet, continually seeking in her collections to summon and surmise the contemporary character of subjective experience and, further, to test the limits of knowledge. ... Armantrout's writing in her latest volume, Versed, will thus be familiar to her longtime readers for its way of holding meaning (and identification) in uneasy suspension. Short lines in brief poems are polyvalent in both voicing and implication, inviting multiple readings. ...yet pleasure arises in contemplating both the options and the paradox."--Tom Griffin, Bookforum
"Armantrout's poetry has always been turned to the present moment. Its formal lineage is from William Carlos Williams and the Objectivists, with their enjambments of modern experience. ... Poetically, Armantrout has always aimed at knowing life by isolating it from narrative. Written under a diagnosis of cancer ("'I just called / to fill you in'"), Versed is a major and moving addition to a life's work in many-angled reflection."--Jeremy Noel-Tod, Times Literary Supplement
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
21 of 26 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
National Book Award Finalist
2010 Pulitzer Prize winner for Poetry
Versed by Rae Armantrout made me feel pretty ignorant (more than usual anyway!). I know that her work has always been highly respected, but when I first picked it up, I just didn't get it. A few phrases, here and there, would resonate, but then the lines would go off the track I imagined they were on. I'm fine with stream-of-consciousness writing, but that doesn't describe it either. Quite simply, I was lost. I put the collection down to return to another time.
In the meantime, The New Yorker had an article about Armantrout's winning the Pulitzer Prize for this collection, and explained in length not just her biography but her status as a Language poet. Language poets were once a cultural rebellion against Post- Modern poets, but have now become more mainstream, and of them, she's known as the best. The essay explained how her poems are often cryptic with double meanings and turns that are meant to wake up the reader, to shock them out of numb reality.
With this in mind, I went back and reread each piece. I confess that most are still over my head, I can't make the connections. But a few really did give me pause. And I think that is how she should be read: not in a hurry to finish but to slowly unravel.
From Outer:
"I'm the one who can't know if the scraggly old woman putting a gallon of vodka in her shopping cart feels guilty, defiant, or even glamorous as she does so. She may imagine herself as an actress playing an alcoholic in a film.
Removal activates glamour?
To see yourself as if from the outside - though not as others see you."
All in all, trying to figure out the meanings was fascinating, like the first few games of Sudoku. But after awhile, just as Sudoku gets more difficult, this felt like more work than I was willing to invest. I just don't have that in me, to understand what these mean. I am too simple for these complexities. However, someone with a stronger background in poetry, especially Language poetry, would likely enjoy this special collection.
2010 Pulitzer Prize winner for Poetry
Versed by Rae Armantrout made me feel pretty ignorant (more than usual anyway!). I know that her work has always been highly respected, but when I first picked it up, I just didn't get it. A few phrases, here and there, would resonate, but then the lines would go off the track I imagined they were on. I'm fine with stream-of-consciousness writing, but that doesn't describe it either. Quite simply, I was lost. I put the collection down to return to another time.
In the meantime, The New Yorker had an article about Armantrout's winning the Pulitzer Prize for this collection, and explained in length not just her biography but her status as a Language poet. Language poets were once a cultural rebellion against Post- Modern poets, but have now become more mainstream, and of them, she's known as the best. The essay explained how her poems are often cryptic with double meanings and turns that are meant to wake up the reader, to shock them out of numb reality.
With this in mind, I went back and reread each piece. I confess that most are still over my head, I can't make the connections. But a few really did give me pause. And I think that is how she should be read: not in a hurry to finish but to slowly unravel.
From Outer:
"I'm the one who can't know if the scraggly old woman putting a gallon of vodka in her shopping cart feels guilty, defiant, or even glamorous as she does so. She may imagine herself as an actress playing an alcoholic in a film.
Removal activates glamour?
To see yourself as if from the outside - though not as others see you."
All in all, trying to figure out the meanings was fascinating, like the first few games of Sudoku. But after awhile, just as Sudoku gets more difficult, this felt like more work than I was willing to invest. I just don't have that in me, to understand what these mean. I am too simple for these complexities. However, someone with a stronger background in poetry, especially Language poetry, would likely enjoy this special collection.
9 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I bought this book because of its recent Pulitzer win. I had read negative reviews before purchasing it, but didn't trust them; I supposed that the commentators I had read were probably just not appreciators of contemporary verse. I can be a bit of a snob, you see; I have a strong appreciation for poetry of many sorts, and consider myself to have fairly well developed taste in modern music, art, and literature.
I must apologize to the reviewers that I took to be Philistines: having now read the book myself, like the previous reviewers of this volume I must confess myself baffled by Armantrout's "Versed."
There are moments of great poignancy here; there are a few passages of real beauty...but the majority of the volume reads like unconnected gibberish on a page. (This from an avid reader of T.S. Eliot, Joyce, Eco...) I'm told that Armantrout's work derives from Language Poetry; that the verse is often disjunct, with strange and thought-provoking transitions that require much of the reader. This I am fairly comfortable with: I have a good background in dialectics; I understand polarizations, juxtapositions, pastiche techniques, quotational devices, etc. in music....What I don't understand is this: why those words rather than others? Why are these two images juxtaposed, rather than two others? What criteria could possibly be articulated to differentiate "good" language poetry from "bad" language poetry?
It's a problem of craftsmanship: one thing that the Darmstadt festival discovered (to take a musical example) is that the more systematically and carefully a piece of serial music is generated, the more random it sounds. How could a listener tell by ear whether it's Stockhausen's latest masterpiece or some configuration of monkeys at a piano? Back to "Versed": how would I know whether what I am looking at is a masterpiece of language poetry or unrelated sentences spliced together on a page, between which I am supposed to invent connections and deep meanings?
The best word to describe my response to this volume is simply "baffled"; I would not have given the volume much consideration at all if it hadn't been given the stamp of approval by such distinguished prize-awarding committees. As it is, I have tried and tried to see this volume as the committees saw it, to find its unifying elements, its positive qualities...and I just can't get it. I am torn by contradictory feelings - that I am missing something extraordinary that would emerge from "Versed" if only I were more receptive, or applied myself better to the poems, or had more of a background in language poetry; and that it really is just "the Emperor's new verse."
I must apologize to the reviewers that I took to be Philistines: having now read the book myself, like the previous reviewers of this volume I must confess myself baffled by Armantrout's "Versed."
There are moments of great poignancy here; there are a few passages of real beauty...but the majority of the volume reads like unconnected gibberish on a page. (This from an avid reader of T.S. Eliot, Joyce, Eco...) I'm told that Armantrout's work derives from Language Poetry; that the verse is often disjunct, with strange and thought-provoking transitions that require much of the reader. This I am fairly comfortable with: I have a good background in dialectics; I understand polarizations, juxtapositions, pastiche techniques, quotational devices, etc. in music....What I don't understand is this: why those words rather than others? Why are these two images juxtaposed, rather than two others? What criteria could possibly be articulated to differentiate "good" language poetry from "bad" language poetry?
It's a problem of craftsmanship: one thing that the Darmstadt festival discovered (to take a musical example) is that the more systematically and carefully a piece of serial music is generated, the more random it sounds. How could a listener tell by ear whether it's Stockhausen's latest masterpiece or some configuration of monkeys at a piano? Back to "Versed": how would I know whether what I am looking at is a masterpiece of language poetry or unrelated sentences spliced together on a page, between which I am supposed to invent connections and deep meanings?
The best word to describe my response to this volume is simply "baffled"; I would not have given the volume much consideration at all if it hadn't been given the stamp of approval by such distinguished prize-awarding committees. As it is, I have tried and tried to see this volume as the committees saw it, to find its unifying elements, its positive qualities...and I just can't get it. I am torn by contradictory feelings - that I am missing something extraordinary that would emerge from "Versed" if only I were more receptive, or applied myself better to the poems, or had more of a background in language poetry; and that it really is just "the Emperor's new verse."
4 of 6 people found the following review helpful
By Pietro
Format:Paperback
There are a lot of negative reviews of Armantrout's work. I sympathize and understand. But what makes her work interesting is that the gist is quirky, fun, and yes, difficult to get. It is poetry of the feeling of language: language's quirks and idiosyncracies in popular lingo and advertisements. She elevates these idiomatic expressions to places of very profound sensibility. But it is difficult at times to connect these seemingly disparate lines, sure. One reviewer cited in full a poem about flies. Obviously the files were in love and flirting in the air which was a kind of a way of elevating the tiny to the universal, something very much aligned with eastern poetics or even Roethke and Dickinson, both who're very much Armantrout's poetic lineage. But Armantrout goes beyond the ordinary lyric, she is informed by her association with "language poetry" yet not limited to its dogmas. There is still a possibility of actual poetry and Armantrout, unlike Bernstein or Silliman, for instance, achieves actual poetry and emerges out of the language school as a reconciliatory "voice."
But the point is that it is unfortunate that Armantrout won the pulitzer for this book. Versed is not her best book by any means. I would suggest "Next Life." Next Life is the book she shoudl have won the Pulitzer for. The Pulitzer committee I think awarded her the prize as a courtesy for her lifelong work. Unfortunately, many readers not familiar with her work will pick this book up as an introduction to her work. This is a mistake. "Next Life" was written when Armantrout was, if I recall, either recovering from or struggling with a terminal illness. The result is that her poetry took a profound turn and she went beyond the usual quirky-ness of language and delved into "truly" "expressive" language. I recommend "Next Life" to readers. If you don't get it, read it again, be patient! It is poetry and usually takes time to get! And definitely her poetry isn't to be taken at face value.
But the point is that it is unfortunate that Armantrout won the pulitzer for this book. Versed is not her best book by any means. I would suggest "Next Life." Next Life is the book she shoudl have won the Pulitzer for. The Pulitzer committee I think awarded her the prize as a courtesy for her lifelong work. Unfortunately, many readers not familiar with her work will pick this book up as an introduction to her work. This is a mistake. "Next Life" was written when Armantrout was, if I recall, either recovering from or struggling with a terminal illness. The result is that her poetry took a profound turn and she went beyond the usual quirky-ness of language and delved into "truly" "expressive" language. I recommend "Next Life" to readers. If you don't get it, read it again, be patient! It is poetry and usually takes time to get! And definitely her poetry isn't to be taken at face value.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
1.0 out of 5 stars
look at this re armantrout- why write poetry like this? i meen really?
this came frm wikipedia re this poet (poetess?)?
this seems like so much bool shit: ? am i wrong? read this crap- non referentiality- seems right wing- ayn rynd? Read more
this seems like so much bool shit: ? am i wrong? read this crap- non referentiality- seems right wing- ayn rynd? Read more
Published 6 months ago by David Eberhardt
4.0 out of 5 stars
Do even getters get it?
As I write this thirteenth review, the star-ratings are stretched out like I've never seen them anywhere else: every rating from one to five coming from two or three readers... Read more
Published 19 months ago by James M. Rawley
2.0 out of 5 stars
Reflection on the State of Poetry
There are a few things to like in these poems and a few things that leave me puzzled and unable to get an accurate glimpse inside Rae's mind, or my own for that matter. Read more
Published 23 months ago by W. Ricci
3.0 out of 5 stars
Disjointed.
Well good luck to those who like this book. It made me feel disjointed, even a bit empty. I don't get it. I suppose the Pulitzer judges went for it hook, line and sinker. Read more
Published on February 4, 2011 by edward J. zapata
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of the Best by One of Our Best
Rae Armantrout's Versed is a confident continuation of the singular, uniformly high-quality work Armantrout has been delivering for years. Read more
Published on November 16, 2010 by BeauRiceATX
2.0 out of 5 stars
Pulitzer winner? Really?
Rae Armantrout, Versed (Wesleyan, 2009)
I have no idea what's wrong with me these days. I seem to have strayed far, far from the path where poetry is concerned. Read more
I have no idea what's wrong with me these days. I seem to have strayed far, far from the path where poetry is concerned. Read more
Published on September 21, 2010 by Robert P. Beveridge
4.0 out of 5 stars
Elusive and beautiful
The meaning of many of these poems is elusive. Yes, this can make the reading a frustrating experience, but besides the display of wit there are frequent moments of great beauty... Read more
Published on August 11, 2010 by JV
1.0 out of 5 stars
Obscurity Without Purpose
There is a laziness to these poems, a fake rigor -- short sparse lines that imply lyric tension, but feel like no more than cocktail coaster jottings. Read more
Published on June 19, 2010 by Ace11
4.0 out of 5 stars
versed rocks
These series of poems are wondrous and a kind of odes to language itself. I love poetry and Rae seems to bend language and spin wondrous poems in her newest work Versed. Read more
Published on April 26, 2010 by Kenneth J. Hoeck
1.0 out of 5 stars
Versed
I read Versed in a bookstore, and I can't figure out for the life of me why anyone would want to pay money for it.
Published on April 24, 2010 by Gregory Moss
