Go Figure
About this book
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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Information
Table of contents
- CoverÂ
- Half Title
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Dedication
- ContentsÂ
- Here I Go
- It
- Freeze Tag
- Skid
- Fortune
- At the Moment
- Child’s Play
- Escape Velocity
- Fractal
- Simply
- Narrative
- Forests
- Enchanted Forest
- Story Line
- Conversations
- Listing
- Dots
- Two Things
- Go Figure
- Knots
- Word Is
- Other Minds
- Meaning
- Machine Learning
- Uncanny Valleys
- Timing
- Organoids
- Zing
- Flame
- Disasterville
- Bushwhack
- Glyphs
- Debt Economy
- Proof
- Our Wits
- Magazines
- Hyper-Vigilance
- Shrink Wrap
- Drills
- Further Thought
- Attempts
- Will
- Preconditions
- Seeing Reason
- Reasons
- The Birds
- Reporting
- Communal
- Slipstream
- Reconnaissance
- Sides
- After
- Preparedness
- What to Call It
- Stalling
- Picture This
- Rivets
- Fire
- Reverb
- In Passing
- Death
- In Practice
- Could
- Dated
- Traveling
- Source Code
- Forth
- Go Round
- Personals
- Your Business
- The Artemis
- Be More
- Beyond
- Beyond 2
- Smidgens
- Overthink
- Strategies
- The Shivers
- Someone Else
- Central
- Stranger
- Perpetuity
- In Time
- Homey
- Love Poem
- The Takeaway
- Never
- True
- Angel
- White Sky
- Waves
- Between
- Acknowledgments
