Mistress of Distraction

In Rae Armantrout's new collection, Wobble, her poem "Practicing" calls to mind a poem by George Oppen's "Psalm" (1975). Both poets call attention to language and the observed world. Oppen illuminates what Burt Kimmelman calls the "physical tangible landscape" as he observes deer in the forest. Near the end of this short poem, Oppen slides into the physical tangibility of language itself, the grammar of seeing. In the eyes of the deer, the roots dangling from their mouths, the sun and the leaves, he hears language merging with the thing itself, "The small nouns/ crying faith." While Oppen takes his reader into the thingness of this seeing-word-eye moment, almost mesmerizing us with presence, Armantrout, on the other hand, calls forth a meditative-image and then leaves us with a question.

As the sun finds youupstanding,

knottedat intervals,

gray-green

In the second stanza with "as I do—," we begin to see the tree's body and life as related to her own body and writing practice.

As you were limbsaloft and

eagerly splayed,still practicing

the old faithas I do—

these words, pushedto the fore,

posing

At the end of the poem, I'm wondering about the relationship between the tree and poet and on the meaning of "old faith" and "posing." As poets, aren't our words and lines a type of posturing? And as we age and continue writing, some of us, like Armantrout, keep the old faith, keep writing and meditating on the meaning of life through language art. The tree's limbs splay open, minute-by-minute continuing throughout its life to adjust for balance and to allow sunlight and water to merge with its body. As it stands in the middle of a field so beautiful, all by itself, knotted and aged, I imagine the poet standing there, too, perhaps her arms stretched under the sun, absorbing the beauty of the tree and the sun.

As a "mistress of distraction's indirection," Armantrout often angles from one idea, metaphor, or image to another, inviting us to analyze the relationship. In her poetic world, metaphor and analogy never make a tight fit. Just when I think I have figured it out, meaning slips away.

In "Arch," she addresses a seahorse and compares it to an arched eyebrow. Immediately I am underwater drifting with this calm sea animal:

Like an arched eyebrowtraveling alone, you drift,

seahorse,

a forgotten, persistentquestion.

Despite your skepticalattitude, it's true

that your numbers are crashing.

If an arched eyebrow indicates a person who isn't approachable and who needs more space (as internet beauticians explain), that's an unusual but apt view of a lone seahorse in a vast ocean. She reminds us that the animal is an endangered species even though ironically it consumes "up to 3,000 baby shrimp / per day!" A quick internet search and I learn that seahorses are widely consumed as a result of traditional Chinese medicine, for such problems as wheezing, impotence, and labor induction.

The title "Arch" might also suggest a monarch, the one above the others drifting along and consuming others, but also an arch might signify a beginning and an end of a curve.

Who doesn't wantto be a revenant,

to go back to basicsin a big way

By returning to "basics," avoiding death, we long to start over again, maybe living in a natural world without all the human distractions and complications in our day and time; instead, hunting prey and drifting proudly along. In the next line, I'm surprised—

on the small screenwhich, somehow, still

survives? "Terrific"and "terrible"

I now suspect that she is looking at a seahorse on a cellphone, perhaps the same image I am looking at as I read about its characteristics. Perhaps Armantrout is suggesting that our magnificent human eyes spend too much time looking into screens instead of into the world. Or maybe we too are over consuming as we drift along with...