Conjure (Wesleyan Poetry Series) - Hardcover

Armantrout, Rae

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 081957936X ISBN 13: 9780819579362

Publisher: Wesleyan University Press, 2020

Synopsis

Like magic, these succinct poems reveal multiple realities

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

About this title

About the Author

RAE ARMANTROUT is the Pulitzer Prize winning author of fifteen books of poetry. She has published ten books with Wesleyan University Press, including Wobble, Entanglements, Partly, and Versed. She lives in Everett, Washington.

Edition details

• Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
• Publication date: 2020
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 081957936X
• ISBN 13: 9780819579362
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 104