ITSELF
ALSO BY
RAE ARMANTROUT
Just Saying Money Shot Versed Next Life Collected Prose Up to Speed Veil: New and Selected Poems The Pretext True
Rae Armantrout
| WESLEYAN POETRY | ITSELF |
Wesleyan University Press
Wesleyan University Press
Middletown CT 06459
www.wesleyan.edu/wespress © 2015 Rae Armantrout All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America Designed by Mindy Basinger Hill Typeset in Minion Pro
Wesleyan University Press is a member of the Green Press Initiative. The paper used in this book meets their minimum requirement for recycled paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Armantrout, Rae, 1947–
[Poems. Selections]
Itself / Rae Armantrout.
pages; cm. — (Wesleyan poetry series)
ISBN 978-0-8195-7467-1 (hardcover: acid-free paper) —
ISBN 978-0-8195-7568-8 (ebook)
I. Title.
PS3551. R455A6 2015
811’.54—dc23 2014034434
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.
5 4 3 2 1
Cover: This photograph of a spongy decorator crab (Marcocoeloma trispinosum) shows how this particular crab used other living creatures to decorate itself—in this case by including some spectacular zoanthids (Zoanthus sp.). Decorator crabs attach a variety of living and nonliving material to their carapace (exoskeleton shell) as camouflage. This crab, living among a colony of the zoanthids, and was nearly invisible. Its camouflage shows the evolution of “tool use” at this “primitive” level of the animal kingdom. Courtesy of Coral Morphologic, www.coralmorphologic.com
The animals themselves occupied only the last and largest chamber; the rest were filled with air. The walls between the chambers, known as septa, were fantastically elaborate, folded into intricate ruffles.
ELIZABETH KOLBERT
The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History
CONTENTS
10 Pitch
11 Price Points
12 Difference
14 Eden
16 Sonnet 3
17 Itself
18 Rooms
19 Bivouac
20 Material
21 Flo
22 The New Irony
23 Sponsor
24 The Matter
26 Two and Two
28 Personhood
30 Friends
31 The Couple
32 Headlong
33 Fundamentals
two MEMBRANE
37 Membrane
39 Keepers
41 Poem
42 Alignment
43 Habitat
44 The Wait
46 Occurrence
47 End User
49 Loop
50 Geography
51 Persistence
52 Place Mark
53 Believing
54 Head
55 Control
56 Difficulty
57 Rituals
58 The Times
60 Evidence
61 Houses
62 All Souls
63 Functions
64 Our World
66 Episodes
67 The Pull
68 You
three LIVE THROUGH
71 Holiday
72 Glare
73 The Eye
75 The New Zombie
77 Live Through
78 Not
79 Kingdom
80 Kingdom 2 (a poetics)
81 Kilter
82 Expression
83 Afterlife
84 Blessed
85 Clearance
86 Cloudless
87 Home
88 The Score
90 Fall
92 Exit Row
93 Deep Time
94 Device
95 Lounge Area
97 New Way
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS