back in chicago. rae armantrout is reading today, and i like her work, but i'm not going. why? i'm just not going. i remember first reading her work in baton rouge in connection with the work of picard--'we have to produce language that is powerful enough to overcome the silence.' the silence in her work often seems as significant as what she states. take, for example:
Marks resembling
the holes
in dead leaves
that define the thing(moth wing).
That flutter of indifference,
feigned?
from "Attention"
the line breaks and minimal description leave weighted silence for the reader to interpret through/in. many writers accomplish a similar effect; however, armantrout's silences seem different, somehow more fragile to me--i don't mean that in a perjorative way. many beautiful things are fragile, and it is that fragility that i see in her work.
from "Attention"
the line breaks and minimal description leave weighted silence for the reader to interpret through/in. many writers accomplish a similar effect; however, armantrout's silences seem different, somehow more fragile to me--i don't mean that in a perjorative way. many beautiful things are fragile, and it is that fragility that i see in her work.
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