With enjambment and double meanings, the best poems here use crystal-sharp images to muse on lost time and to take "the private public," as Armantrout writes so eloquently. For all attentive poetry readers.—C. Diane Scharper, Towson Univ., MD
Armantrout, also a National Book Critics Circle Award winner, has described her work as "a Cheshire poetics, one that points in two ways and then vanishes." With pleasure, you watch her work mature in this volume.
There's a tremendously satisfying consistency in Armantrout's recent work that's evident here, yet it also feels more personal. Important for all poetry collections.
These poems will appeal to those who like language poetry, but more traditionalists may side with the question posed in the title poem, "Why don't you just say/ what you mean?"