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Poetry Magazine

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               1

Stars

are the campfires

of exiles.

Language exists

to pull things

close.

               *

Stop that!

Communications

are being monitored.

Collusion is forbidden.

Humanity

will be punished

with the profusion

of new jargons.

               2

Inverted in glass,

a white cup

invents the underworld.

               *

Fog thins

to chiffon,

nylon,

Easter.

               *

In the universe next door,

I’m gone

and the shadows

of the leaves

of the elm I had pulled down

still make a fuss

over the earth.

Source: Poetry (January 2011).

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MORE FROM THIS ISSUE

This poem originally appeared in the January 2011 issue of Poetry magazine

• Be yond
  by Joel Lipman
• The Madness of the Gods
  by Helen Fisher
• Mystery and Solitude in Topeka
  by Mark Strand

• January 2011 Table of Contents
• Subscribe to Poetry magazine
• About Poetry magazine
• Buy This Issue

More about this poem

Biography

Rae Armantrout, one of the founding members of the West Coast group of Language poets, stands apart from other Language poets in her lyrical voice and her commitment to the interior and the domestic. Her short-lined poems are often concerned with dismantling conventions of memory, pop culture, science, and mothering, and these unsparing interrogations are often streaked with wit. “You can hold the various elements of my poems in . . .

Continue reading this biography

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Poems by Rae Armantrout

• Accounts
• Advent
• And
• Anti-Short Story
• Apartment

• More poems by Rae Armantrout (36 poems)
  • Attention
  • Confidential
  • Covers
  • Djinn
  • Double
  • Dusk
  • Eyes
  • Fact
  • Home Federal
  • Hoop
  • Just Saying
  • Language of Love
  • Loop
  • Luster
  • Missing Persons
  • Natural History
  • Our Nature
  • Outage
  • Paragraph
  • Passage
  • Procedures
  • Soft Money
  • Spent
  • The Eye
  • The Thinning
  • The Way
  • Transactions
  • Upper World
  • Veil
  • Will
  • Xenophobia

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Poem Categorization

SUBJECT Arts & Sciences, Language & Linguistics

POET’S REGION U.S., Western

SCHOOL / PERIOD Language Poetry

Poetic Terms Free Verse

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Related

Audio

• Poem of the Day: Articulation
• Poem Talk: Grease is the Word: A Discussion of Rae Armantrout's "The Way"
• Poetry Off the Shelf: More Than Meets the I
• Poem of the Day: The Subject
• Poem of the Day: Two, Three

Video

• Out of the Financial Crisis, a New Language for Poetry Emerges

Articles

• Art vs. Laundry by Stephen Burt
• More Than Meets the I by Ange Mlinko
• One Class, 36,000 Students by Elliott Holt
• Rae Armantrout: “Our Nature” by Stephen Burt
• Show Your Work! by Matthew Zapruder

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