Acclaimed Language poet Rae Armantrout writes about death, culture, and language in her winning collection Versed. Strongly influenced by William Carlos Williams, Armantrout’s poetry is often immanent and speech-based, and requires the reader to construct meaning actively when reading her work. On my first reading of Versed, I did not fully appreciate these poems which seemed either a little too easy or inaccessible; however, it helped me a lot to look up information on the life and poetic influence of the author, which is something I remember someone in class mentioned as helpful in reading Armantrout’s work.
I appreciated and connected particularly to the poems in Versed that had personal elements to them; for example, in her poem “Own,” Armantrout explores what we can assume is a personal hospital experience, as Armantrout’s struggle with cancer is often brought to her poetry. This segmented piece jumps from stanzas of her blunt hospital surroundings, to dream sequences, to thoughts about the body. She describes herself as the “blip / floating across my own / ‘field of vision..’” (58), seeing herself from afar as if detached from her perception, as well as from her body and her slow recovery. Her eyes “closed,” she sees the “Spartan wall of the ICU / covered in a scrambled hodge-podge of sticky notes, /…snippets of reference, / madly irrelevant.” She is dreaming and awake, seeing a fantastical scene that is both starkly real and almost ridiculous in how it describes the organization of the hospital; such important information on this triumphant wall is shown as a huge meaningless mess. The doctors are also described in this way, as a “Chorus of expert voices beyond my door, forever / dissecting my case. / …‘We will prevail,’ says the leader on multiple / screens.” This warrior-type character and “Chorus” of doctors negate their professional, organized selves. Lying and listening to these doctors around her, Armantrout doesn’t buy into their positive words: “he’s become pure / being, insisting / only on insistence” (59).
In the last few stanzas of “Own,” the cancer appears in description and thought; a dream-like vision of actors gathering in an act of cancer: “A crowd (scene) of cells, growing wildly, / …Able to draw blood vessels to itself / by emitting a mock distress call.” Just as Armantrout describes her hospital surroundings as false and futile, now she is playing with the idea that cancer has a sense of humor, can play “any role you like and go on / forever.” This sense of the body as an opera house of cancer is ridiculous, just as a friend who thinks they can be a savior is ridiculous: “‘SHH!’ he says to anyone who speaks.” A patient nearby says, “‘I want / to be fine. It’s my body!’” (58), which I think is what the speaker also wants, what the actors of her cancer really want to say. Finally, I think the best line of this poem is, “Symbolism as the party face of paranoia.” This line makes me think of both the perfectly chosen words, both in connotation and in percussion; Armantrout brings the mind both to language itself and the idea of fear or paranoia having a silly, and yet colorful mask of meaningfulness. Overall, this line exemplifies what she does in her entire poem; grabs at something as big and frightening as cancer and turns it into theatrical, and yet incredible performance.
Overall, I think Armantrout’s poetry is imaginative and extremely meaningful, personal and influential.
I like seeing other people’s opinions—that you didn’t fully appreciate these poems. That’s weird to me, because right off the back, I did appreciate the poems. I have a hard time understanding why someone doesn’t like this kind of poetry, because I myself write this type of poetry all the time. I can understand Armantrout’s meaning behind the illusion of vagueness. She writes just enough words to convey her messages. I do agree with the best poems and the ones I wanted to read again and again were the ones that had a personal element to them. They were the most relatable. The ones with some type of visual were the ones that stuck out to me, though. The ones that were simply voice I had to slow down and try to understand it much more, because they were the most abstract. I thought the poems about cancer were particularly sad, and I liked the way she tried to express the situation. The hospitals, the emotions. I liked the way you said there were “perfectly chosen words” because I definitely think that Armantrout had that. Each word was carefully chosen and had a purpose. No word was unneeded and every word was important.
ReplyDelete