What do "self" and "it" have in common? In Rae Armantrout's new poems, there is no inert substance. Self and it (word and particle) are ritual and rigmarole, song-and-dance and long distance call into whatever dark matter might exist. How could a self not be selfish? Armantrout accesses the strangeness of everyday occurrence with wit, sensuality, and an eye alert to underlying trauma, as in the poem "Price Points" where a man conducts an imaginary orchestra but "gets no points for originality." In their investigations of the cosmically mundane, Armantrout's poems use an extraordinary microscopic lens-even when she's glancing backwards from the outer reaches of space. An online reader's companion is available at http://raearmantrout.site.wesleyan.edu.
"The powers of brevity, observation, and sarcastic wit that took Armantrout from 1970s avant-gardist to widely imitated-and Pulitzer Prize-winning-authority are back, and as sharp as ever."
Peter Robinson
""Armantrout serves up more of her enlightening and confounding minimalist anti-lyrics. The poems' titles set the reader off on disorienting inward journeys, in which each word, each abbreviated line considers, contradicts, and questions our experience and perception of inner and outer worlds.""
Janet St. John
""[I] enjoyed this collection of poems from Armantrout as much as any of her last three, including the 2010 Pulitzer-winning Versed. Built of short lines and ingenious jump cuts, the material world and human language, the poems are quick but deep, sharp but clean.""
