“Here are speakers searching for connections, something meaningful between a stray hand gesture and a neutron star…”

Oblique? Obtuse? An extreme juxtaposition of the micro and universe? A heavy-handed deferment of referents? Yup. All of this, sometimes set to be obtuse, to deliberately obfuscate so that readers do not know fully (or with any familiarity) where they are, all while dropping loosely-assembled verse minimally on each page.

Much of the poetry is off-putting, to be sure. Once or twice I imagined a 1970s scene of teenagers passing around a joint and riffing these stanzas.

And yet there is much to Armantrout’s work, even then, to admire. Here are speakers searching for connections, something meaningful between a stray hand gesture and a neutron star, between words which distantly resonate in likeness, between a memory and micron. Occasionally, even, they’re found.