Rae Armantrout

Rae Armantrout’s collection Versed won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. She taught for more than twenty years at the University of California, San Diego.

Two Poems

Rae Armantrout, 25 January 2024

The Blue Car

Rain began to speckle the pavementThat is known as an establishing shot.

*

We claim things happenin the pastto prove we have survived them.

The idea is that the past is sealedand cannot be tampered with –

like an ideaor a locket.

*

We count to oneon a locket

while a blue car passesheaded west.

*

The constant rain stoppedand the clouds liftedfor a moment.

Time, intention, a...

Three Poems

Rae Armantrout, 20 October 2022

Rivets

‘You are not your thoughts.’

Find the still point,the naked bulb,

the white peonyunfolding

one moreinner ring

while not beingexactly open.

An animal needssomething to watch.

*

What I sawas a formation

of fighter jetsin the distance

was, instead,a blow-up

of rivetson a panel truck.

*

Thinking is hard,but thoughts just happen

because of the nearrhymingof sparks.

Story Line

Kids like talking...

Poem: ‘Fortune’

Rae Armantrout, 24 February 2022

1

It could have started like this.My mother took me to fabric shops when I was a kid.I would wander through the tall bolts dazed, readingfortunes in the colours.

2

Whitepapier-mâchéof the mock-orange floweron its many stems.

Lavender, as an afterthought, necrotic –carried interest.

Ochrelike sunset in LA,like dehydration.

The popular mauve-greywhich blendsindifference with...

Poem: ‘Too Much Information’

Rae Armantrout, 22 April 2021

                        1

Dears,

the backwards-facing S,a decoration in the iron rail,was here when I came,with its extra curlicuesat each end,and a miniatureversion of itselflike a foetusaffixed to its middle.

I’m telling you more, perhaps,than you need to know.

The sun on...

Two Poems

Rae Armantrout, 8 October 2020

Finalist

Nothing to see here.

Pine cones litterthe gutters.

Whose turn is itto blow on the mirror,mama?

*

Each pushes forwardin her wild eagernessto take partin a ritual.

‘Is this that thingabout fireflies?’

Maybe.

*

We use similes to showthings are connected –

and they are,just not in the ways we say.

*

A hole in fresh dirtsurrounded by orange conesinto whicha crow peers,hops...

Where Things Get Fuzzy: Rae Armantrout

Stephanie Burt, 30 March 2017

By​ 1979, when Rae Armantrout published her second book, The Invention of Hunger, with Lyn Hejinian’s Tuumba Press, she was already what much of the literary world would soon learn to...

Read more reviews

Read anywhere with the London Review of Books app, available now from the App Store for Apple devices, Google Play for Android devices and Amazon for your Kindle Fire.

Sign up to our newsletter

For highlights from the latest issue, our archive and the blog, as well as news, events and exclusive promotions.

Newsletter Preferences