Up to Speed

For poetry class. I’m not a huge Armentrout fan. ( )

http://shawjonathan.wordpress.com/2009/12/24/armantrout-on-the-trot/

There are many lovely moments in these 80 pages, and a lot of stuff that I don't get (but I don't necessarily need to). Possibly my favourite lines, from 'Another Sense':

I don't mind
learning
I'm in hell

if
I can learn it
again and again.

Each of Armantrout's poems have light stanzas, which may be easy to read, but can be a little vague at times. However, they somehow belong together, flow together, and become something awkward, but recognizable and witty. Many mention dreams and the lines have the same feeling of a dream, blurring reality and connectedness.

She likes to play with words (e.g. "The 'ness'/that is nothingness", and "I think you're being escorted/between 'woe'/and 'woven'").

I enjoyed it and may read it again.

I have many, many quotations (which says something in itself):

"A child's cry breaks/into spires/and alcoves;//glass/is stained." - Sake

"Or when we were in bed, he throwing me into a new position/every few seconds as if frantically searching for nothing." - Afterlife: 2 (I would love to see this turned into a full poem)

"He always says my poems were lonely, as if each thing (word, per-/son) stood still, waiting for meaning." - Afterlife: 2

"In the shorter version,//tentacled/stomach swallows stomach." - Entanglement

"Can a dreamer/outwit her dream?//Not on a first date." - My Advantage

"Anyone/not seconded//burns up in rage." - Seconds: 3

"If sadness/is akin to patience, we're back!" - Upperworld

"It's the way the eight legs/can neither line up nor/come abreast,//each entering the present/in its own good time,//that spooks us." - Many

"The opposite/of nothingness//is direction." - Once

"In order to write/you must fall in love//with your own thought/every time." - Write Home ( )