Monday 21 January 2013

Rae Armantrout's Next Life (Wesleyan University Press, 2007), first selection

Here are some favourite passages--indeed, I have so many, I need to break them up into two posts!



Not getting lost
but looping
then extending myself

afresh,
starburst,

reversing myself
as if turning
to face a partner

last section of "Reserved"


(Echo persuades us
everything we say
has been said at least once
                                                    before.)

* * * 

Is it the beginning or end
of real love
when we pity a person

because, in him,
we see ourselves?

from "Two, Three"


Now's hopeful
pucker.

from "As (2)"


I have enough past
and future

to accompany me now.

from "Blur"


If each moment is in love
with its image
in the mirror of
adjacent moments

(as if matter stuttered),

then, of course, we're restless!

from "The Subject"


The very old man shuffles very slowly
not between
the white lines of a crosswalk
but down one of them.

Like a figure in a dream
his relation to meaning
is ominous

the last section of "Agreement"



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