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, 8 August 2013

Keepers

1. On ‘Buried Alive’, possessions can’t be lost

or found. They can’t be exchanged.

They’re negotiated

as one negotiates a landfill.

2. In the militarised evening, Boeing

touts its service to ‘our troops’. We’re shown

soldiers pinned down. One is strapped

to a pallet – ready for take-off?

3. In the currency market, I’m the...

Two Poems

Rae Armantrout, 19 July 2018

Pretty Little

I’m not lonely because I have secrets;

I’m lonely because words can’t bring the past into the present

(which amounts to the same thing).

        *

Jack Rabbit and the Lonely Present

is the title of a book I almost wrote

        *

I’m lonely because you’re...

Poem: ‘Understandings’

Rae Armantrout, 22 November 2018

To convey great effort and mild reluctance, one groans briefly when sitting up in bed.

This is sometimes known as prayer.

            *

Ignore the wind chimes. They’re a bad example.

            *

To stand beneath or walk behind –

to comprehend!...

Two Poems

Rae Armantrout, 4 July 2019

Value Added

The way orchid splits the difference

with hot pink, say,

in the hanging plastic crystal –

how an increased level of saturation

can come across as reticence

or even as retraction.

There, where it changes tack –

the as in the ‘come across as’ –

put your tongue on that.

‘A Child Is Being Beaten’

Sign in car window:

It’s not about us,...

Two Poems

Rae Armantrout, 6 February 2020

Instruction

Were you surprised to learnthat you could swapan ‘i’ for an eye,and ‘a’ for an apple?

That’s the lure.

Later, you maywant to pray.

*

You may be leftto think your wayfrom moment to moment

without being toldwhat a moment is,

if it’s something solid.

*

The mad hear languagespeak itselfand are humble before it.

They receive instruction.

*

The child in her...

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...

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