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Rae Armantrout, Up to Speed, Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 2004. $28.00 unjacketed cloth, ISBN: 0-8195-6697-7 $13.95 paperback, ISBN: 0-8195-6698-5, 80 pages.
Reviewed by Amelia Martens
When words are selected or plucked from time and space by a careful writer they become loaded far beyond what might appear to be their initial capacity. The sparseness of Rae Armantrout's latest collection, "Up to Speed," mimics and questions the concept of time as a straight line with straightforward poems that move like time in, as Armantrout writes, "shining/circularity." If we entertain the idea that this collection "begins" with the first poem, "Up to Speed," then we are instantly provided a glimpse of the book's content (time, point of view, existence/mortality, the use of words, meaning, even our development as human beings). This collection seeks to streamline itself, attempting to convey ideas instantaneously...