Like all my poems, 'Negotiations' has several sources. It deals with aging lovers and the often silent deals they make. Thinking about bargains made me think of The Little Mermaid and that made me remember something I had just read… — Rae Armantrout Copy Share
I am attracted to looking at the different things language can mean even in one sometimes quite ordinary utterance. Writing is partly about listening closely to yourself as you think or compose and being aware of the different tensions and weights among the words, the different directions any one of them could lead. I like to play with the multiplicity… — Rae Armantrout Copy Share
People probably long for something genuinely personal in a society where the personal is often indistinguishable from the "personalized." Maybe the poetry audience member is searching for his or her own "personal space" and they expect the poet to be a sort of avatar of the private life. But that sort of representation is distasteful to me. Asking a poet… — Rae Armantrout Copy Share
Like most of my poems, 'Lie' has several sources: I read a very troubling book called The Sixth Extinction. I took note of the way people, including me, enjoy talking knowledgeably about how the world will end. I drove to Tucson and saw the desert flowering on either side of the road. And I glanced at my spam to see… — Rae Armantrout Copy Share
Poets tend to form loose groups - the "Romantics" or the "Imagists". And sometimes they write manifestoes in the name of these groups. This can be good. It forces the poet and the audience to think. But it can also be dangerous. It can turn into a branding device so that potential readers believe they know all they need to… — Rae Armantrout Copy Share
The ghosts swarm. They speak as one person. Each has left something undone. — Rae Armantrout Copy Share Image
Metaphor is ritual sacrifice. It kills the look-alike. No, metaphor is homeopathy. — Rae Armantrout Copy Share Image
Carried by light, images remain while sensation is so evanescent as to be always beyond belief. — Rae Armantrout Copy Share Image
