Reviews for Veil: New and Selected Poems

The average rating for Veil: New and Selected Poems based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-09-28 00:00:00 Jae Schon Veil contains poems from not five but six of Armantrout's previous books ( Extremities , The Invention of Hunger , Precedence , Necromance , Made to Seem , and The Pretext ) as well as a generous selection of new poems (Veil). In addition, Veil contains a collaboration with Ron Silliman entitled "Engines"... Extremities... We know the story. She turns back to find her trail devoured by birds. The years; the undergrowth - Generation, pg. 5 * * * A girl is running. Don't tell me "She's running for her bus." All that aside! - Anti-Short Story, pg. 12 The Invention of Hunger... 1 Discomfort marks the boundary. One early symptom was the boundary. The invention of hunger. "I could use energy." To serve. Elaborate systems in the service of far-fetched demands. The great termite mounds serve as air-conditioners. Temperature within must never vary more than 2 degrees. 2 Which came first the need of the system? Systematic. System player. Scheme of Things. The body considered as a functional unit. "My system craves calcium." An organized set of doctrines. A network formed for the purpose of... "All I want is you." 3 was narrowing their options to one, the next development. Soldiers have elongate heads and massive mandibles. Squirtgun heads are found among fiercer species. Since soldiers cannot feed themselves, each requires a troupe of attendants. 4 Her demands had become more elaborate. He must be blindfolded, (Must break off his own wings) wear this corset laced tight (seal up the nuptual cell) to attain his heart's desire. Move only as she permits (Mate the bloated queen each season) or be hung from the rafters. How did he get here? 5 Poor baby, I heard your hammer. The invention of pounding. "As soon as it became important that free energy be channeled." Once you cared to be set off from the surrounding medium. This order has been preferred since improvement was discovered. The moment one intends to grow at the expense. When teeth emerge Demand for special treatment was an early symptom - Natural History, pg. 15-17 * * * spider on the cold expanse of glass, three stories high rests intently and so purely alone. I'm not like that! - Dusk, pg. 22 Precedence... Man in the eye clinic rubbing his eye - too convincing. Like memory. My parents' neighbours' house, backlit, at the end of their street. - Postcard, pg. 26 * * * The dead boy was found clasping, "wrapped around" a tree, one chose in a roiling wilderness, the urgent dream where love gives way to rescue. Or rescue to love - Precedence, pg. 36 "Engines" (with Ron Silliman)... A herd of wild helicopters scud in the night. Syllables penetrate the red mulch of values, skeletons bloom at the read of the lab so recently repainted a pale green. Fingers curl slowly in sleep. The logic of ambition is to seem a straight line. In the butcher shops of the North End blood stains the flesh of skinned rabbits. Style is its own mark. Electrical storms in the skull cloud the eye. The volley maintained nears orgasm. Narcs prefer down vests, the low cut in the rear concealing both gun and handcuffs. The smell of curry in the corridor of the small hotel. You stand in the glass both, pretending conversation. Under the back stairs cobwebs define the spiders' hunt. The noise of the fan cooling the slide projector is punctuated with clicks. The cosmos is a purple flower. Unable to reply, melodrama skips ahead. "I think something happens in the end." Her face, like her mother's, is tense. One death had sent an unidentifiable pulse of dread across three unborn generations. "How will I know when I make a mistake?" Pinpointing errors, I know where I am. A yellow "sea" or "field" or vinyl tufts. Glamour makes sense of the creature. So they laid her in a glass coffin. The spirits whom we call angels were never at any time or in any way darkness. The eucalyptus only seems to shrug. Light flicks over those leaves in complete silence. That is a slippery tongue. Do we suggest relations we aren't willing to declare? For this paragraph, attach separate form 1040-ES. His face, like his mother's, was dense. Instinctively we crouched, disembarking the Sikorsky, darting swiftly in a bent-over manner beyond the wide sweep of the blade (which only became visible as it slowed to a stop). The red spot on the beak of the male gull is thought "beautiful." Her one idea provokes disaster. He came in behind. There are several ways in which this can be taken, but we prefer air freight. In a magazine, store ammo. The body distills poisons. Something longer and more languid perhaps, convoluted, looking simultaneously over its shoulder and between its legs, saddened by the very idea of girth, wearing a saxophone like a medal or sunglasses after dark. I chance this sentence at the point of max conflict. Thank you Saint Jude. Over several months he domesticated the rat, making a pet of it. Melodrama skips? [...] - Engines, pg. 41-42 Necromance... Poppy under a young pepper tree, she thinks. The Siren always sings like this. Morbid glamour of the singular. Emphasizing correct names as if making amends. Ideal republic of the separate dust motes afloat in abeyance. Here the sullen come to see their grudge as pose, modeling. The flame trees tip themselves with flame. But in that land men prized virginity. She washed dishes in a black liquid with islands of froth - and sang. Couples lounge in slim fenced yards beside the roar of a freeway. Huge pine a quarter mile off floats. Hard to say where this occurs. Third dingy bird-of-paradise from right. Emphatic precision is revealed as hostility. It is just a bit further. The mermaid's privacy - Necromance, pg. 49-50 * * * There were distinctive dips and shivers in the various foliage, syncopated, almost cadenced in the way that once made him invent "understanding." * Now the boss could say "parameters" and mean something like "I'll pinch" By repeating the gesture exactly the woman awakened an excited suspicion in the infant. When he awakened she was just returning from one of her little trips. It's common to confuse the distance with flirtation: that expectant solemnity which seems to invite a kiss. * He stroked her carapace with his claw. They had developed a code in which each word appeared to refer to some abdicated function. Thus, in a department store, Petite Impressions might neighbour Town Square. But he exaggerated it by mincing words like "micturition," setting scenes in which the dainty lover would pretend to leave. * Was it sadness or fear? He still wasn't back. The act of identification, she recognized, was always a pleasure, but this lasting difference between sense and recognition made her unhappy or afraid. Once she was rewarded by the beams of headlights flitting in play. - Language of Love, pg. 58-59 Made to Seem... Impressions bribe or threaten in order to live. Retreating palisades offer a lasting previousness. * Let us move fast enough, in a small enough space, and our travels will take first shape, then substance. * In the beginning there was measurement. How much does self-scrutiny resemble mother-touch? * Die Mommy scum! To come true, a thing must come second. - The Creation, pg. 67-68 * * * Shooting pleasures Ok'd by My being seen For Or as If. * Not just light at the end of the tunnel, bu hearts, bows, rainbows - all the stickers teachers award is pleased. * Pigeons bathe in technicolour fluid "of a morning." * If I was banging my head with a shoe, I was just exaggerating - like raiding my voice or the ante. Curlicues on iron gratings: Can it be a flourish is a grimace, bu a grimace isn't a flourish? * On the inscribed surface of sleep. Almost constant bird surroundings. "Aloha, Fruity Pebbles!" Music, useful for abstracting emphasis. Sweet nothing to do with me. - Confidential, pg. 84-85 The Pretext... 1 With whom do you leave yourself during reveries? The one making coffee or doing the driving - that is the real person in your life. Now that one is gone or has tagged along with you like a small child behind Mother. "No!" you explain in the crowded aisle. "Without articulation there's no sense of place." 2 When I dreamed about flying it was as a skill I needed to regain. I'd make practice runs and float high over the page. Pleasure was a confirmation. I remember the way and I was right! Still, one should be patient with the present as if with a child. To follow its prattle - glitter on water - indulgently is only polite. - Articulation, pg. 94-95 * * * In my country facts are dead children. When I say "dissociation," I may have said "real-time action." This is my given name: Thirty-One Year Old Prima-Gravida, The Pokey-Puppy. Words can be repeated. The Distractible Sparrow, The Smallest District. The Strictest District. Astronomers know a signal's not an answer. - Statement, pg. 112 Veil... Bird calls rise and drop to an unseen floor. The son pretends to slip and fall into a wading pool, limbs frozen akimbo, eyes locked on mother. One person stutters as a way of insisting on unconditional love and one who hears a busy signal may ring again in anger. What if one pretends to restrain another while the other seems to rotate helplessly faster and faster? Each finds his mate pre- dictable but believes his own rigidity must excite his partner - Theories, pg. 118-119 * * * Card in pew pocket announces, "I am here." I made only one statement because of a bad winter. Grease is the word; grease is the way I am feeling. Real life emergencies or flubbing behind the scenes. As a child, I was abandoned in a story made of trees. Here's the small gasp of this clearing come "upon" "again" - The Way, pg. 125 * * * A boy severs his fingers, by accident, in my imagination where his first thought is "My mother will be so frightened!" * Horn jags from a stereo as evasive maneuvers: extruded ink jets, sea snakes turn mouth-forward, bodies snapping as if out of sight, as if * over and over were a scouting party that arrives, piecemeal, in the third person - Piecemeal, pg. 128-129 * * * The doll told me to exist. It said, "Hypnotize yourself." It said time would be transfixed. * Now the optimist sees an oak shiver and a girl whiz by on a bicycle with a sense of pleasurable suspense. She budgets herself with leafy prestidigitation. I too am a segmentalist. * But I've dropped more than an armful of groceries or books downstairs into a train station. An acquaintance says she colours her hair so people will help her when this happens. To refute her argument, I must wake up and remember my hair's already dyed. * As a mentalist, I must suffer lapses then repeat myself in a blind trial. I must write punchlines only I can hear and only after I've passed on - Veil, pg. 131-133 * * * "Who told you you were visible?" God said, meaning naked or powerless. * We had planned this meeting in advance, how we'd address each other, how we'd stand or kneel. Thus our intentions are different from our bodies, something extra, though transparent like a negligee. * Though a bit sketchy, like this palm's impression of a tree - flashing scales, on the point of retraction. But sweet. You don't understand! Like a lariat made of scalloped bricks circling a patch of grass - The Plan, pg. 140-141 * * * From the first abstraction, loss is edible. To think is to filter passers-by through your semi-permeable membrane; keep yourself in circulation. What is appetite is a by-product? If you pass through zero, you may see someone you love. Here's your mother with her anxious grasp, her clock-watching - Purpose, pg. 147

Review # 2 was written on 2007-07-27 00:00:00 Heather Larson I'm extremely picky about the avante garde, but I like her work, and I think she's doing the most absorbing writing within that school of thought.