Up to Speed

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by Rae Armantrout

Wesleyan University Press

Due/Published February 2004, 80 pages, paper

ISBN 0819566985

This collection of poems focuses on the phenomenon of time, both as lived experience at the start of the 21st century and as a stubborn mystery confronting physicists and philosophers. The poems in this book are polyphonic: they juxtapose the discourses of science and religion, Hollywood and the occasional psychotic stranger. The title poem, which appears in Best American Poetry 2002, leads off with a "sphinx" asking "Does a road / run its whole length / at once? / Does a creature / curve to meet / itself?" Armantrout's work, with its careful syntax bordering on plain speech and meticulously scored short lines, is always struggling with the problem of consciousness, its blindspots and double-binds. The poems whirl like shifting and scattered pieces of the present moment. They attempt to "make sense" of our lives while acknowledging the depth of our self-deception and deception.

"The poems in Armantrout's new collection are edgy, idiosyncratic, tough, and tender. Marianne Moore, in her wonderful essay "Anna Pavlova," speaks of the ballerina's high arches and "toes of steel" as having made her "pizzicati on tiptoe" and steadily held pauses possible. I can't think of a more perfect way to describe Up to Speed." -- Susan Howe