Rae Armantrout, "Two, Three"

 Two, Three by Rae Armantrout : The Poetry Foundation

Rae Armantrout : The Poetry Foundation

Sometimes brainy poetry is just annoying—emotionally sterile, with a dominant aroma of snobbery and elliptical cynicism. “Figure me out,” it seems to say, adding “as if you could,” as it swaggers away. It speaks in code and seems not to care whether anyone outside its tiny, arcane fraternity gets it.

Most likely, this is what many think about poetry in general. 

I’m starting to think that one brainy, superb exception is Rae Armantrout, who is a “founding member of the West Coast group of language poets.” (poetryfoundation.org).   “Key aspects of language poetry include the idea that language dictates meaning rather than the other way around. Language poetry also seeks to involve the reader in the text, placing importance on reader participation in the construction of meaning.” (poets.org)

I don’t get every ounce of Armantrout’s “Two, Three,” but I never feel that she’s trying to lord it over me. Instead I think she’s trying her best to get at the heart of a matter for which language is insufficient. But language and other, primarily mental connections are the only tools she has.

Maybe the poem’s central question is when and how two items become three.  Or, “Whenever there are two, there might also be an invisible third somewhere. What are the character and the role of the third? An echo? A witness?”

I like physicality in my pictures, so the boy in the pirate hat, the old Ford, the two plump men, and the bulldog hold my hand and my interest. There will always be flesh and metal to fall back on as I try to fly a little into Armantrout’s sphere of associations, including those well beyond meaty physicality, which comprise the majority of the poem.

From there to the Christian Trinity might be a short step or a long, twisting leap over a deep, twisting chasm. Maybe this sounds odd, but aren’t God and Jesus fairly concrete and comprehensible compared to the Holy Ghost? Isn’t The Holy Ghost the hardest thing to crystallize in our minds, to make tangible, or understandable in some way? So why not compare it to an echo, or an invisible third person witnessing or governing an ordinary street scene?

The closing question of the poem in the last five lines—isn’t that Armantrout’s somewhat unusual take on empathy and self-centeredness?  And isn’t that question about as fundamental to Christianity as any other concept in the whole religion? What is real love, and how do we come to know it while mired in all our self-love? And therefore self-pity.

How remarkable that all this nuanced questioning began with the first line’s “Sad, fat boy in pirate hat.” What better figure to start the dance of thought that will lead to the immensely human and humane final question? Also, note that what begins as a question about the “singular” (the boy and the old Ford), and then moves through “the bitter symbiosis of couples,” ends up in an attempt to touch on love between two humans. 

Human interaction with God or the gods or the universe or with other humans is a monumentally subtle, complex, and above all, mysterious business. It would be folly to try to capture all that in a language limited to objective and rational discourse.

But how is a poet supposed to convey her own experience with the inarticulate without becoming merely exotic, private and exclusive herself? Maybe Rae Armantrout has as good a response in “Two,Three” as most thinkers and writers have come up with anywhere else. 

Even if I’m right about some of that, it only scratches the surface. But this one poem, without deliberately tricking and abandoning me, might entertain, intrigue, and challenge me for weeks. What more can I ask? There will be the two of us, the poem and I, followed “by the eyes” of our “invisible” dialogue, with invisible witnesses, which will have the character of an echo and will not go away. 

My thanks again to The Poetry Foundation for making all this intriguing stuff available. 

 Two, Three by Rae Armantrout : The Poetry Foundation