Just Saying

It's surprising how much jagged energy courses through the typically spare, distilled poems in this latest book by Armantrout, a distinguished poet who finally, deservedly won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for 2009's Versed. From violins coursing downward and monomaniacal hummingbirds, to "fire in a cage,/ gnawing on wood" and "bushes/ flowering furiously," to the poet herself "practic[ing] high speed de-/ selection," energy—veering up, gearing down, ever driving us forward—is Armantrout's very subject. That, and the balance we strike as we are buffeted about between beginning and end ("The difference// between nothing/ and nothingness// is existence"). Being "balanced," though, is something achieved only through constant readjustment, redefinition, de-selection (it's also the solid-as-rock, one-word closing line of the poem "Subdivision"). Life darts restlessly about: "This train of thought/ is not a train,// but a tendril,/ blind"; one poem even ends open-endedly with the lines "slim trunks bend/ every which". It's all very refreshing, even, dare one say, energizing.