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    Finalists
    Finalists
    Finalists
    Ebook227 pages1 hour

    Finalists

    By Rae Armantrout

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    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.


    CONTRAST


    What's to like
    if not contrast?

    Shadows beneath
    the model's sharp

    cheekbones, her ample
    yet precise lips.

    Clean lines separating
    bounty
    from its opposite.

    This is not
    what I want

    to want.

    These eyes
    on the hypothetical

    distance.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWesleyan University Press
    Release dateMar 8, 2022
    ISBN9780819580696
    Finalists
    Author

    Rae Armantrout

    RAE ARMANTROUT has published eighteen books of poetry including Versed, which received a Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Critics Circle Award, and was a finalist for a National Book Award; Finalists; Conjure; Wobble (finalist for a National Book Award); Partly: New and Selected Poems; Itself; Just Saying; and Money Shot. Armantrout is Professor Emerita of Writing at the University of California at San Diego. She has been published in many anthologies, including, The Oxford Book of American Poetry, and Scribner's Best American Poetry, and in such magazines as, Harpers, The New Yorker, American Poetry Review, Boston Review, Scientific American, Chicago Review, and the Los Angeles Times Book Review.

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      Book preview

      Finalists - Rae Armantrout

      title

      Hang On

      Domestic as

      an empty shopping cart

      parked on a ledge

      above a freeway.

      Artifactual as

      an acorn barnacle.

      What is the purpose of barnacles?

      people ask the internet.

      Barnacles are filter feeders.

      They’re fish tank décor.

      A plaque of barnacles

      on top of a toilet—

      this cluster

      of brittle puckers,

      clinging

      to its old idea,

      these craters striped

      pale lavender

      for some

      unlikely eye.

      Red Sky at Night

      If the sun rests in the notch

      on that mountain ridge.

      If an old woman is scribbling.

      If an old man alone

      in the breakfast room

      at the Vagabond Executive

      Motor Inn

      doing crossword puzzles

      beneath The Early Show

      babble

      continues.

      If the tree blooms pink

      there will be more

      than we can imagine

      always,

      extra promptings

      of pure nothing

      which we can neither

      keep nor forget.

      Vultures

      1

      A product can be authentic;

      an object cannot.

      This presents a problem.

      An identity can be authentic;

      an experience cannot.

      How was your sleep experience,

      asks Marriott.

      Praise or blame

      is the only legitimate response.

      2

      Vultures wheel over Miami.

      A sign that appears

      day after day

      is not a sign.

      The library boasts a fine collection

      of books written in private

      languages.

      3

      Identity is made

      of select experiences.

      4

      When you are genuinely sick,

      the leaves recede

      and the flickering holes between them

      come forward—

      not angels, but

      unnamed objects

      Who’s Who

      1

      Yeats saw a fish

      as a mysterious girl

      which made the world seem

      more fuckable.

      He wanted to follow her

      home

      after he killed her,

      but, of course, did not.

      2

      Here’s the thing,

      says the brand spokesmodel

      waving her Diet Coke

      and sounding beleaguered

      yet defiant,

      "just do you"

      Contrast

      What’s to like

      if not contrast?

      Shadows beneath

      the model’s sharp

      cheekbones, her ample

      yet precise lips.

      Clean lines separating

      bounty

      from its opposite.

      This is not

      what I want

      to want.

      These eyes

      on the hypothetical

      distance.

      Array

      A human begins

      by claiming

      to be something else:

      a red bird

      in a picture book;

      a little red

      Corvette.

      This is known as capture

      or entrainment.

      How will she split

      the differences?

      A stream system

      seen from above;

      tuning fork twigs

      in winter forests.

      Threat Landscape

      1

      Life began with general irritability,

      then developed lateral suppression,

      the ability to boost some signals

      while tamping others down—

      attention—

      creating a high contrast world

      with exaggerated peaks and troughs,

      the threat landscape,

      projected now on screens

      by paid experts.

      2

      You’re right, Sasha.

      I forgot

      The butterflies are frightening

      with their abrupt approaches

      and batty swerves.

      They mix the outside in.

      You’re right.

      We don’t know what will happen.

      Visible from Space

      In the crosswalk, a woman plods,

      swinging her arms briskly.

      One of many

      who act out

      the act

      they are actually

      performing.

      While crop circles

      parody

      the desire to be seen

      and I shove off

      to look askance.

      Doubt

      is an out

      of body experience.

      Instruction

      Were you surprised to learn

      that you could swap

      an i for an eye,

      and a for an apple?"

      That’s

      Enjoying the preview?
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