Rae Armantrout's Versed reminds me more of Pascal's Pensees then it does any poetry I know (of course, there are so many different types of poetry, who is to say what is and isn't?). Her poetry is punctuated by endings and beginnings. Pauses in the actual framework. They are sharp intercisions into the poem, chopping it up into bits, making it both devourable and tough. Some pieces I understand, some I don't. The ones I do sometimes feel connected to the rest, but rather they often feel more like a puzzle. Figuring out one piece does not make the poem understood as a whole.

It is not that Armantrout's poetry is bad, rather it seems academic, like Derrida's philosophy or Freud's psychology. I wonder if it is meant for me.

This causes me to linger between irritation and intrigue. I'm drawn in by the puzzle, by the need to struggle out the meaning. But I'm also repulsed by the incoherence. The rambling memories and thoughts, the lack of a true center from which the poem orients itself.

The problem is I'm not getting a whole poem to relate to. I'm getting pieces, and maybe that is the poem, the pieces, but it makes for a disconcerting, almost anxiety-induced read. I check the poems I like almost half heartedly, uncertain whether I like them or just part of them. And then often the ones I like I have no explanation for why. I am picking and choosing what I keep and reject but what makes that choosing hard is the lack of a coherent poem to choose. I want something packaged and whole and Armantrout offers nothing of the kind. And when I am both drawn in and repulsed, it messes with my interior world. Armantrout says it well in Help:

A space
"inside"

can't bear
to be un-

interrupted

I mark it:

"I" "I" "I"

You can see Armantrout's poetry is disconcerting in its structure and words. Even the break between "un-" and "interrupted" is meant to be daunting.

The disconcerting nature of Armantrout's poetry is not only what it produces, but what it reveals. It doesn't create incoherence as much as it reveals it.

Armantrout's poetry is as fragmented as we are. And when I read it, my true state surfaces. It is similar to sitting quietly in a chair and not doing, saying or thinking anything. I dare you to try it. Within 5 minutes you will be uncomfortable. Within 10, anxiety or depression or anger may surface and you will want something to do. I can barely make it to 15.

When I push away all the activity and business that keeps my mind occupied, I find myself alarmingly unstable. I am not as whole as I thought. Armantrout calls this "space 'inside:'"

"I" "I" "I"

There isn't one "I," there are several. Maybe these represent the id, ego and superego. Whatever they are, they are fragmented and divided. Like her poetry. Like myself.

What is disconcerting about her poetry is what is disconcerting about myself. Not at all the parts work together, not all the parts make sense. I've discovered this in therapy, in practicum at Mars Hill, in silence, in poetry, in reflection.... I am not whole. There isn't a well put together anything. The question for me is then, What do I do with what I discover?

As I was reading Armantrout's poetry I realized I was rejecting and accepting poems similar to the way I reject and accept myself. I throw out the unpleasant parts and leave what is best and presentable. But what I am really left with is even more fragmented than before. Because just as Armantrout's poetry is incomplete without the breaks, pauses, and confusion, so am I without my own.

It would be nice if life were like Walt Whitman's Song of Myself, but it is more like the chaos and disconnect of Versed, where Armantrout's poetry lacks a center to revolve around as we are eternally searching for one in ourselves.