아먼트라웃(Rae Armantrout)은 종종 언어파 시인으로 구분되지만 상당수 언어시인들이 일반적으로 드러내는 지시성에 대한 불신과 문법파괴를 전면에 내세우지 않는다. 하지만 “간결하고 정확하며 미묘한”(Howe 210) 언어를 통해 세상에 대한 이해를 독특한 방식으로 혁신함으로써 동료 언어시인들과 마찬가지 정치적 효과를 얻고 있다. 이 연구는 아먼트라웃에게 2010년도 퓰리처상과 2009년도 전미도서비평가협회상(National Book Critic Circle Award)을 안겨준 시집 『통달』 (Versed )을 중심으로 그녀의 특징적 언어관을 살피는 데 목적을 둔다.

This paper aims to read closely some poems from Rae Armantrout’s Versed and to interrogate how her poetry, well-known for its “terse, precise, and subtle” language, both hides and reveals possible connections among fragmented and juxtaposed parts whose origins are mostly unknown. Like other language poets, she is strongly against the sovereign “I” in lyrical poetry, and, using a kind of faux-collage, lets different voices mingle into her texts. However, she is not so willing as some other experimental poets to foreground ungrammatical or non-referential language for political purposes. Armantrout has a suspicion that the world is constructed of deceptions “already mysteriously arranged for us,” and, with a view to deconstructing the underlying forces, experiments with a poetic structure typically divided by asterisks or numbers. Her poetic language, relying on ellipsis and separation, is deliberately designed to make the reader fill in the gaps and decide how an affirmative awakening can be aroused among the parts.