Itself

Deft and audacious new poems from the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet

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.

RAE ARMANTROUT is the author of eleven previous books of poetry, including Just Saying, Money Shot, and Versed, winner of the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the 2009 National Book Critics Circle Award. She is a professor of writing and literature at the University of California, San Diego. This is her twelfth book.