Rae Armantrout

Yale Younger Poet Cindy Juyoung Ok resolutely searches for hope in spaces of fragmentation Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize for Best First Book, 2024 • Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Poetry, 2024 “There are places,” Cindy Juyoung Ok writes, “where shaking is expected, loss is / assumed.” In the 118th volume of the Yale Series of Younger Poets, Ok moves assuredly between spaces—from the psych ward to a prison cell, from divided countries to hospice wards. She plumbs these institutions of constraint, ward to ward, and the role of each reality’s language, word to word, as she uncovers fractured private codes and shares them in argument, song, and prayer. Using visual play in invented forms, Ok counters familiar narratives about mental illness, abuse, and death, positing that it is not a person’s character or will that makes survival possible, but luck, and other people. The poems disrupt expectation with the comedy of institutionalized teens, nostalgia after the climate crisis, tenderness in a nursing home, and the wholeness of faltering Englishes. How do pagodas, Seinfeld, ransoms, swans, and copays each make or refuse meaning? Ok’s resolute, energized debut shifts language’s fissures to reassemble them into a new place of belonging.

Yale Younger Poet Cindy Juyoung Ok resolutely searches for hope in spaces of fragmentation Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize for Best First Book, 2024 • Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Poetry, 2024 “There are places,” Cindy Juyoung Ok writes, “where shaking is expected, loss is / assumed.” In the 118th volume of the Yale Series of Younger Poets, Ok moves assuredly between spaces—from the psych ward to a prison cell, from divided countries to hospice wards. She plumbs these institutions of constraint, ward to ward, and the role of each reality’s language, word to word, as she uncovers fractured private codes and shares them in argument, song, and prayer. Using visual play in invented forms, Ok counters familiar narratives about mental illness, abuse, and death, positing that it is not a person’s character or will that makes survival possible, but luck, and other people. The poems disrupt expectation with the comedy of institutionalized teens, nostalgia after the climate crisis, tenderness in a nursing home, and the wholeness of faltering Englishes. How do pagodas, Seinfeld, ransoms, swans, and copays each make or refuse meaning? Ok’s resolute, energized debut shifts language’s fissures to reassemble them into a new place of belonging.

Observant and visionary poems offer way stations amidst turmoil_x000D_ />_x000D_ />Acclaimed author Rae Armantrout's remarkable new collection Safe Rooms, explores the undercurrents of modern life with an unflinching eye on human nature, social malaise, and the unsettling ways in which we attempt to protect ourselves from a world that continually undermines our sense of safety. As the title poem says: "your thoughts /roar and echo//around you—originating/god knows where.// You try to plug your ears/but you are an ear/ that can't stop listening." Through poems that examine our darker impulses—our tendencies to self-destruct, to grapple with envy, and to navigate the intricate web of family dynamics—Armantrout captures the complex, often contradictory ways in which we search for meaning and connection. Her work holds a mirror to the forces shaping us, both intimate and vast, showing that the so-called "safe rooms" we construct are fragile, temporary shelters, not havens from the chaos that surrounds us._x000D_ />_x000D_ />[sample poem]_x000D_ />_x000D_ />THE UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE_x000D_ />_x000D_ /> 1_x000D_ />_x000D_ />An atom "is localized_x000D_ />by an interaction"_x000D_ />_x000D_ />the way you surprise yourself_x000D_ />by expressing an opinion_x000D_ />_x000D_ />when asked,_x000D_ />_x000D_ />one you didn't know you had_x000D_ />and may not hold_x000D_ />_x000D_ />for long._x000D_ /> _x000D_ /> _x000D_ /> 2_x000D_ /> _x000D_ />A subatomic particle is not_x000D_ />its mass or spin_x000D_ /> _x000D_ />the way a person_x000D_ />is not a body_x000D_ /> _x000D_ />and a poem is not_x000D_ />what it says.

Observant and visionary poems offer way stations amidst turmoil_x000D_ />_x000D_ />Acclaimed author Rae Armantrout's remarkable new collection Safe Rooms, explores the undercurrents of modern life with an unflinching eye on human nature, social malaise, and the unsettling ways in which we attempt to protect ourselves from a world that continually undermines our sense of safety. As the title poem says: "your thoughts /roar and echo//around you—originating/god knows where.// You try to plug your ears/but you are an ear/ that can't stop listening." Through poems that examine our darker impulses—our tendencies to self-destruct, to grapple with envy, and to navigate the intricate web of family dynamics—Armantrout captures the complex, often contradictory ways in which we search for meaning and connection. Her work holds a mirror to the forces shaping us, both intimate and vast, showing that the so-called "safe rooms" we construct are fragile, temporary shelters, not havens from the chaos that surrounds us._x000D_ />_x000D_ />[sample poem]_x000D_ />_x000D_ />THE UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE_x000D_ />_x000D_ /> 1_x000D_ />_x000D_ />An atom "is localized_x000D_ />by an interaction"_x000D_ />_x000D_ />the way you surprise yourself_x000D_ />by expressing an opinion_x000D_ />_x000D_ />when asked,_x000D_ />_x000D_ />one you didn't know you had_x000D_ />and may not hold_x000D_ />_x000D_ />for long._x000D_ /> _x000D_ /> _x000D_ /> 2_x000D_ /> _x000D_ />A subatomic particle is not_x000D_ />its mass or spin_x000D_ /> _x000D_ />the way a person_x000D_ />is not a body_x000D_ /> _x000D_ />and a poem is not_x000D_ />what it says.

The 119th winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets prize places science at the heart of his powerful poems For John Liles, science and the natural world form a route into the workings of love, of grief, and of joy in the thrum of life. Judge Rae Armantrout calls his poems “dense, sonically gorgeous studies of various natural things and creatures, including light, bees, minerals, shellfish and crabs, insects, and the workings (and failure) of the heart.” Written under the shadow of our changing climate, Liles’s poems are tender elegies but also praise-songs for the continual unfolding richness of the world. Writes Liles, “oh unending animal, / you go where / the light goes.”

The 119th winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets prize places science at the heart of his powerful poems For John Liles, science and the natural world form a route into the workings of love, of grief, and of joy in the thrum of life. Judge Rae Armantrout calls his poems “dense, sonically gorgeous studies of various natural things and creatures, including light, bees, minerals, shellfish and crabs, insects, and the workings (and failure) of the heart.” Written under the shadow of our changing climate, Liles’s poems are tender elegies but also praise-songs for the continual unfolding richness of the world. Writes Liles, “oh unending animal, / you go where / the light goes.”

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.

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.

A chapbook from Pulitzer Prize winner Rae Armantrout on climate change. Notice is the product of a life-long interest in natural sciences by Pulitzer Prize winning poet Rae Armantrout. The collection draws poems from her previous books calling our attention to how language frames and shapes our relationships to climate and kin. The title is a call to take heed of the signs coming to us daily. "Notice" can be read as a noun or a verb. As a noun it might be thought of as a public warning. The author has selected poems that respond in various ways to the environmental crisis which we all see developing and about which we don't seem to be able to take appropriate action. The poem "Preparedness," for instance, hazards a wild guess about the cause of this failure to act. Some of the poems here address the problem directly. In others the focus is broader or the approach more subtle. There are even a few poems in which the author allows for something like hope.

The 117th volume of the Yale Series of Younger Poets, in which Mary-Alice Daniel confronts tricontinental culture shock and her curious placement within many worlds “Against humans creating hell on earth, Daniel draws on animistic, Islamic, and syncretic Christian traditions from her native Nigeria to unleash potent incantations, rituals and spells, electric as St. Elmo’s fire. Buckle up.”—Rae Armantrout, judge In Mass for Shut-Ins, African and Western mythic systems and modern rituals originate an ill-omened universe. Here, it is always night, grim night, under absurd moons. Venturing through dreamscapes, hellscapes, and lurid landscapes, poems map speculative fields of spiritual warfare. This collection is controlled chaos powered by nightmare fuel. It animates an utterly odd organism: a cosmology cobbled with scripture, superstition, mass media, mad science. Horrid, holy, unholy—these pages overrun with the unhinged, intrusive thoughts that obsess us all late into nighttime.

The 117th volume of the Yale Series of Younger Poets, in which Mary-Alice Daniel confronts tricontinental culture shock and her curious placement within many worlds “Against humans creating hell on earth, Daniel draws on animistic, Islamic, and syncretic Christian traditions from her native Nigeria to unleash potent incantations, rituals and spells, electric as St. Elmo’s fire. Buckle up.”—Rae Armantrout, judge In Mass for Shut-Ins, African and Western mythic systems and modern rituals originate an ill-omened universe. Here, it is always night, grim night, under absurd moons. Venturing through dreamscapes, hellscapes, and lurid landscapes, poems map speculative fields of spiritual warfare. This collection is controlled chaos powered by nightmare fuel. It animates an utterly odd organism: a cosmology cobbled with scripture, superstition, mass media, mad science. Horrid, holy, unholy—these pages overrun with the unhinged, intrusive thoughts that obsess us all late into nighttime.

This volume of the Yale Series of Younger Poets explores love, grief, the opioid epidemic, and coming of age “Elegiac and witty.”—Elisa Gabbert, New York Times, “The Best Poetry of 2022” “These poems name the hurt wrought upon the meek that makes the elegy, here, as much an exaltation of the living as a mournful dirge for the land.”—Major Jackson, Vanderbilt University The 116th volume of the Yale Series of Younger Poets, Robert Wood Lynn’s collection of poems explores the tensions of youth and the saturation points of knowledge: those moments when the acquisition of understanding overlaps with regret and becomes a desire to know less. Comprising poems of place set across the Virginias, this collection includes an episodic elegy exploring the opioid crisis in the Shenandoah Valley as well as a separate series of persona poems reimagining the Mothman (West Virginia’s famed cryptid) reluctantly coming of age in that state’s mountains and struggling with the utility of warnings. These are narrative poems of love and grief, built from a storytelling tradition. Taken together they form an arc encompassing the experience of growing up, looking away, and looking back.

What will we call the last generation before the looming end times? With Finalists Rae Armantrout suggests one option. Brilliant and irascible, playful and intense, Armantrout nails the current moment's debris fields and super computers, its sizzling malaise and confusion, with an exemplary immensity of heart and a boundless capacity for humor. The poems in this book find (and create) beauty in midst of the ongoing crisis.

What will we call the last generation before the looming end times? With Finalists Rae Armantrout suggests one option. Brilliant and irascible, playful and intense, Armantrout nails the current moment's debris fields and super computers, its sizzling malaise and confusion, with an exemplary immensity of heart and a boundless capacity for humor. The poems in this book find (and create) beauty in midst of the ongoing crisis.

CARE Dress like you care! Eat like you care! Care like you care! You don't think apples just grow on trees, do you? * A fish taps a clam against a bony knob of coral to crack its shell – which demonstrates intelligence yes, but is the fish pleased with itself? * Alone in your crib, you form syllables. Are you happy when one is like another? Add yourself to yourself. Now you have someone Rae Armantrout has always taken pleasure in uncertainties and conundrums, the tricky nuances of language and feeling. In Conjure that pleasure is matched by dread; fascination meets fear as the poet considers the emergence of new life (twin granddaughters) into an increasingly toxic world: the Amazon smolders, children are caged or die crossing rivers and oceans, and weddings make convenient targets for drone strikes. These poems explore the restless border between self and non-self and ask us to look with new eyes at what we're doing.

CARE Dress like you care! Eat like you care! Care like you care! You don't think apples just grow on trees, do you? * A fish taps a clam against a bony knob of coral to crack its shell – which demonstrates intelligence yes, but is the fish pleased with itself? * Alone in your crib, you form syllables. Are you happy when one is like another? Add yourself to yourself. Now you have someone Rae Armantrout has always taken pleasure in uncertainties and conundrums, the tricky nuances of language and feeling. In Conjure that pleasure is matched by dread; fascination meets fear as the poet considers the emergence of new life (twin granddaughters) into an increasingly toxic world: the Amazon smolders, children are caged or die crossing rivers and oceans, and weddings make convenient targets for drone strikes. These poems explore the restless border between self and non-self and ask us to look with new eyes at what we're doing.

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Rae Armantrout is at once a most intimate and coolly calculating poet. If anyone could produce a hybrid of Charlie Chaplin's playful "Little Tramp" and Charlize Theron's fierce "Imperator Furiosa," it would be Armantrout. Her language is unexpected yet exact, playing off the collective sense that the shifting ground of daily reality may be a warning of imminent systemic collapse. While there are glimmers here of what remains of "the natural world," the poet confesses the human failings, personal and societal, that have led to its devastation. No one's senses are more acutely attuned than Armantrout's, which makes her an exceptional observer and reporter of our faults. She leaves us wondering if the American Dream may be a nightmare from which we can't awaken. Sometimes funny, sometimes alarming, the poems in Wobble play peek-a-boo with doom.

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.

Entanglements is the product of a years-long interest in science, particularly physics by Pulitzer Prize winning poet, Rae Armantrout. The collection includes poems from her previous books, as well as four new poems. Armantrout delved into books intended to make science accessible for the average person, as well as engaged in conversations with physicists. The title is inspired by the way particles can become so entangled that any space between them becomes irrelevant, but also by the way in which the author’s daily life became entangled with the exploration of physics.

Pulitzer-palkitun Rae Armantroutin runous on yhtä aikaa vilpitöntä ja älyllistä, läsnäolevaa ja kokeellista.Arkiset havainnot esitetään etäännytetyllä uteliaisuudella, aito ja autenttinen sekoittuvat politiikan, mainonnan ja luonnontieteen kieleen. Nämä ovat runoja, jotka kysyvät ja ehdottavat ilman varmuuksia ja totuuksia.Kunhan sanon -valikoima sisältää runoja Armantroutin koko uran ajalta, 1970-luvun ensimmäisistä kokoelmista aina 2010-luvulle asti.Aki Salmela on helsinkiläinen runoilija ja kääntäjä. Salmela on suomentanut useita yhdysvaltalaisen nykyrunouden klassikoita kuten John Ashberyä, Ron Sillimania ja James Tatea.