Money Shot (Wesleyan Poetry Series) - Hardcover

Armantrout, Rae

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 081957130X ISBN 13: 9780819571304

Publisher: Wesleyan University Press, 2011

Synopsis

The poems in Money Shot are forensic. Just as the money shot in porn is proof of the male orgasm, these poems explore questions of revelation and concealment. What is seen, what is hidden, and how do we know? Money Shot's investigation of these questions takes on a particular urgency because it occurs in the context of the suddenly revealed market manipulation and subsequent "great recession" of 2008–;2009. In these poems, Rae Armantrout searches for new ways to organize information. What can be made manifest? What constitutes proof? Do we "know it when we see it"? Looking at sex, botany, cosmology, and death through the dark lens of "disaster capitalism," Armantrout finds evidence of betrayal, grounds for rebellion, moments of possibility, and even pleasure, in a time of sudden scarcity and relentless greed. This stunning follow-up to Versed―winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and a finalist for the National Book Award―is a wonderfully stringent exploration of how deeply our experience of everyday life is embedded in capitalism.

About this title

About the Author

RAE ARMANTROUT is a professor of writing in the literature department at the University of California at San Diego, and the author of ten books of poetry.

Reviews

Starred Review. In her follow-up to the Pulitzer- and National Book Critics Circle Award–winning Versed, Armantrout—who has always built her wily, jumpy, intricately witty and wise poems from scraps of popular and high culture, overheard speech, and found text, as well as her own quirky observations—tackles, in her oblique and inimitable way, what is perhaps the signature issue of the new millennium: money, or, more generally, how everything human has a price. "Hit the refresh button/ and this is what you get," writes Armantrout in "Money Talks": "money pretending/ that its hands are tied." These poems observe a world in which we assign blame to money—or "Mother," "Great angels" and "the objects/ I have caused// to represent me/ in my absence"—rather than take responsibility ourselves. We also mistake superstitious obsession for hard work, believing, for example, "The idea that,/ if I say it well enough,/ fear/ will be gone." And it's a world where degradation is sexy ("They're beneath you/ and it's hot") and "Security cameras/ record each moment, but/ nobody can bear to watch." Armantrout is only getting better: these new poems are among her best, and among the most relevant poems now being written. (Feb.)
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Edition details

• Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 081957130X
• ISBN 13: 9780819571304
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 92