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    Partly: New and Selected Poems, 2001–2015
    Partly: New and Selected Poems, 2001–2015
    Partly: New and Selected Poems, 2001–2015
    Ebook278 pages1 hour

    Partly: New and Selected Poems, 2001–2015

    By Rae Armantrout

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    About this ebook

    Rae Armantrout's poetry comprises one of the most refined and visionary bodies of work written over the last forty years. These potent, compact meditations on our complicated times reveal her observant sensibility, lively intellect, and emotional complexity. This generous volume charts the evolution of Armantrout's mature, stylistically distinct work. In addition to 25 new poems, there are selections from her books Up To Speed, Next Life, the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award winning volume Versed, Money Shot, Just Saying, and Itself. Including some of her most brilliant pieces, Partly affirms Armantrout's reputation as one of our sharpest and most innovative writers.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWesleyan University Press
    Release dateAug 2, 2016
    ISBN9780819576569
    Partly: New and Selected Poems, 2001–2015
    Author

    Rae Armantrout

    RAE ARMANTROUTt has fifteen previous books including Versed, which received a Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Award, and a National Book Critics Circle Award; Finalists, Conjure, Wobble (finalist for a National Book Award), Partly: New and Selected Poems, Itself, Just Saying, and Money Shot. Armantrout is Professor Emerita of Writing at the University of California at San Diego. She has been published in many anthologies, including, The Oxford Book of American Poetry, and Scribner's Best American Poetry, and in such magazines as, Harpers, The New Yorker, American Poetry Review, Boston Review, Scientific American, Chicago Review, and the Los Angeles Times Book Review.

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      Book preview

      Partly - Rae Armantrout

      Legacy

      "Do words just pop

      into your head?"

      Some may go

      unexploded.

      –

      "Have you thought much

      about your legacy?"

      I’m a legacy

      prisoner.

      No I’m not.

      –

      What do you call precious?

      The precious doesn’t

      get around much

      so it stays small.

      Or it orbits

      the same small

      pronoun,

      a kid

      on a carousel.

      Look at me!

      It fiddles

      with itself.

      But I’ve got bigger things

      to pick up

      and put down.

      In Front

      Tree in new leaf

      in front of

      a brick building

      with narrow

      white-wood balconies

      slung under panes

      of glass

      in which a tree

      is being

      dissected

      before an audience

      of one,

      none,

      hundreds.

      –

      New twigs

      do the splits

      as I once did

      Exchange

      City of the future

      in which each subway station’s stairs

      lead to the ground floor

      of a casino/

      mall.

      –

      What counts

      is the role

      defined for each piece

      by a system of rules saying

      how it can move,

      not the stuff

      the piece is made of.

      –

      In the intersection,

      a muscular, shirtless man

      with small American

      flags tied to each wrist—

      so that he looks

      like a wrestler—

      pushes, no, shoves

      then catches a stroller

      piled high with plastic bags—

      his stuff.

      –

      City of the future,

      where a tramway to the top

      of a peak

      opens onto

      a wax museum

      in which

      Michael Jackson

      extends one gloved hand

      Canary

      1

      Some folks got tortured

      by folks

      right afterwards

      at an obscure

      farmer’s market

      where handcrafted soda

      and artisanal mining

      showed

      we were on the right track.

      2

      Canaries

      served as coq-au-vin.

      3

      We thought of events

      as landmarks

      first,

      then as lifebuoys,

      but in this too

      we were mistaken.

      Mistakes

      1

      The subject will claim

      that she has been taken

      to the wrong place.

      That the room

      she is brought back to

      is not the room she left.

      That these comings and goings

      are happening

      to someone else,

      are gathering momentum

      controlled by a secret

      mechanism.

      That she needs to tell

      someone.

      2

      I walk out the door

      to the stone bench

      without meaning to

      (without meaning it?),

      each step

      jarring my frame

      as it would anyone’s

      If

      1

      One cultivates

      a garden of peculiars

      beyond reproach

      a plant like a half-

      folded accordion,

      a plant like a pale

      rock, split in two

      as if to ask,

      "Where

      is the original?"

      2

      (and a few

      self-starters

      with their sharp

      rocket-fin leaves.)

      3

      You, husk-light,

      forgetful,

      with these

      hollow bones,

      this fly-away hair,

      are you ready

      for a new season?

      If it’s just this:

      nutmeg-flavored latte,

      pumpkin

      Surplus

      I sat on the patio and wrote

      Each afternoon I would sit on the patio where one waggish, unmoored

      tendril nodded emphatically and the tree cast a web of nervous yet

      resilient shadows, while the crickets had no idea what they were

      insisting on—

      but then what’s an idea?

      I might visualize living sculpture (in which subjectivity, unable

      to either detach itself from the body or direct it, had a public

      experience of itself as surplus) without wishing to harm anyone.

      In fact, I did.

      Assembly

      1

      With large red lips,

      a ceramic fish face

      in a pink knit pouch

      from which spinelike

      sticks protrude

      is suspended

      above the work station.

      2

      Though ghosts don’t exist,

      electrons on the mirror’s surface

      absorb arriving photons and,

      in their excitement,

      emit others that

      come back your way,

      replicate a woman.

      Outburst

      1

      What do you like best

      about the present?

      Reflection—

      its spangle

      and its non-

      locality:

      those eucalyptus leaves

      as points of light

      splashed

      over this windshield.

      2

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