Itself

What do 'self' and 'it' have in common? In Rae Armantrout's new poems, there is no inert substance. Self and it (word and particle) are ritual and rigmarole, song-and-dance and long distance call into whatever dark matter might exist. How could a self not be selfish? Armantrout accesses the strangeness of everyday occurrence with wit, sensuality, and an eye alert to underlying trauma, as in the poem 'Price Points' where a man conducts an imaginary orchestra but 'gets no points for originality.' In their investigations of the cosmically mundane, Armantrout's poems use an extraordinary microscopic lens-even when she's glancing backwards from the outer reaches of space. An online reader's companion is available at http://raearmantrout.site.wesleyan.edu.