Go Figure

Keen, pithy meditations on a world that continues to surprise us

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.