Overview

Keen, pithy meditations on a world that continues to surprise us /> />The poems in Pulitzer Prize-winner Rae Armantrout's new book are concerned with ""this ongoing attempt/ to catalog the world"" in a time of escalating disasters. From the bird who ""check-marks morning/once more//like someone who gets up/to make sure// the door is locked"" to bat-faced orchids, raising petals like light sails as if about to take flight, these poems make keen visual and psychological observations. The title Go Figure speaks to the book's focus on the unexpected, the strange, and the seemingly incredible so that: ""We name things/ to know where we are."" Moving with the deliberate precision that is a hallmark of Armantrout's work, they limn and refract, questioning how we make sense of the world, and ultimately showing how our experience of reality is exquisitely enfolded in words. ""It's true things fall apart."" Armantrout writes. 'Still, by thinking/we heat ourselves up."" /> />Sample Text /> />HYPER-VIGILANCE /> />Hilarious, /> />the way a crab's slender />eye-stalks />stand straight up /> />from its scuttling />carapace— /> />the way vigilance />takes many forms? /> /> * /> />That bird check-marks morning />once more /> />like someone who gets up />to make sure /> />the door is locked. /> /> * /> />I sound />like I know />what I'm talking about. /> />I sound like a comedian.

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9780819500793

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"""There is surely an inquisitive nowness in her timeless poems, a willingness to engage with Guy Debord's spectacle or to completely ignore it, and a thrilling ability to transport William Carlos Williams's iconic red wheelbarrow into an uninhibited, semantic, seismic, motionless playground.""--David Moscovich, Rain Taxi, reviewing a previous edition or volume ""If Armantrout shows a new attention to aging and death in the COVID era, her aim is to gain insight and epiphany through the kind of astringent, epistemological estrangements that her work has long mastered. While death is a central theme in this work, Finalists emanates the radiant astonishment of living thought.""--David Woo, The Poetry Foundation, reviewing a previous edition or volume ""Call it modernism, postmodernism, constructivism, avant-garde, or a mix. What we encounter are minimalistic, fragmentary structures that make the whole by breaking the whole.""--Grace Cavalieri, Washington Independent Review of Books, reviewing a previous edition or volume"

""There is surely an inquisitive nowness in her timeless poems, a willingness to engage with Guy Debord's spectacle or to completely ignore it, and a thrilling ability to transport William Carlos Williams's iconic red wheelbarrow into an uninhibited, semantic, seismic, motionless playground.""--David Moscovich, Rain Taxi, reviewing a previous edition or volume ""If Armantrout shows a new attention to aging and death in the COVID era, her aim is to gain insight and epiphany through the kind of astringent, epistemological estrangements that her work has long mastered. While death is a central theme in this work, Finalists emanates the radiant astonishment of living thought.""--David Woo, Harriet Books, Poetry Foundation, reviewing a previous edition or volume ""Call it modernism, postmodernism, constructivism, avant-garde, or a mix. What we encounter are minimalistic, fragmentary structures that make the whole by breaking the whole.""--Grace Cavalieri, Washington Independent Review of Books, reviewing a previous edition or volume ""Armantrout's love of language and the joy she brings to shaping make this a welcome balm for uncertain times. Short, focused poems address topics ranging from the connection between beauty and significance to the sickening regularity of mass shootings in America. Other subjects are more innocuous, with often humorous imagery: a cauliflower head is 'made of/ little noggins' while a palm frond 'shimmies/ like a tambourine.'""--Publishers Weekly

"""There is surely an inquisitive nowness in her timeless poems, a willingness to engage with Guy Debord's spectacle or to completely ignore it, and a thrilling ability to transport William Carlos Williams's iconic red wheelbarrow into an uninhibited, semantic, seismic, motionless playground.""--David Moscovich, Rain Taxi, reviewing a previous edition or volume ""If Armantrout shows a new attention to aging and death in the COVID era, her aim is to gain insight and epiphany through the kind of astringent, epistemological estrangements that her work has long mastered. While death is a central theme in this work, Finalists emanates the radiant astonishment of living thought.""--David Woo, Harriet Books, Poetry Foundation, reviewing a previous edition or volume ""Call it modernism, postmodernism, constructivism, avant-garde, or a mix. What we encounter are minimalistic, fragmentary structures that make the whole by breaking the whole.""--Grace Cavalieri, Washington Independent Review of Books, reviewing a previous edition or volume ""Armantrout's love of language and the joy she brings to shaping make this a welcome balm for uncertain timesShort, focused poems address topics ranging from the connection between beauty and significance to the sickening regularity of mass shootings in America. Other subjects are more innocuous, with often humorous imagery: a cauliflower head is ""made of/ little noggins,"" while a palm frond ""shimmies/ like a tambourine.""--Publishers Weekly"

Author Information

RAE ARMANTROUT is the award-winning author of eighteen books of poetry, most recently Finalists and Conjure. Her collection Versed won a National Book Critics Circle Award, a Pulitzer Prize, and was a finalist for a National Book Award. Her work has appeared in countless anthologies including Best American Poetry, In The American Tree and Language Poetries.

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