Differentials: Poetry, Poetics, Pedagogy

Direction

Age as a centripetal force.

She can’t hold the ¤ctive

panoply of characters

apart.

Is that scary?

Origin’s a sore point.

(When the old woman sheds tears,

I say, “What’s wrong?”

as if surprised

the way Peter denied

he knew Jesus in the bible.

But Jesus too

refused to recognize his mom.)

We want a more distant relation

like that of Christmas tree ornament

to fruit. (60–61)

How would I go about discussing this poem in the classroom? Students who
have at least some familiarity with poetry are likely to have two contradic-
tory reactions. On the one hand, “Direction” looks familiar on the page. Its
short free-verse lines and small stanzaic units, its largely casual, colloquial
diction and phrasing, its everyday references—these are fairly standard in po-
etry anthologies today. If the students have already been exposed (as I hope
they have) to the poetry of William Carlos Williams and Robert Creeley,
they will recognize these poets as obvious in®uences on Armantrout. A less
obvious, but perhaps more striking, presence here is that of Sylvia Plath; such
one-line observations as “Age as a centripetal force” and “Is that scary?” recall
poems like “Cut Thumb” and “Love Song.”
On the other hand, in Armantrout’s poem there is much less continuity

The Case of Rae Armantrout 245