Itself. Rae Armantrout

      

      ITSELF

      ALSO BY

      RAE ARMANTROUT

       Just Saying Money Shot Versed Next Life Collected Prose Up to Speed Veil: New and Selected Poems The Pretext True

      Rae Armantrout

WESLEYAN POETRY

ITSELF

      Wesleyan University Press Middletown, Connecticut

      Wesleyan University Press

      Middletown CT 06459

      www.wesleyan.edu/wespress © 2015 Rae Armantrout All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America Designed by Mindy Basinger Hill Typeset in Minion Pro

      Wesleyan University Press is a member of the Green Press Initiative. The paper used in this book meets their minimum requirement for recycled paper.

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Armantrout, Rae, 1947–

      [Poems. Selections]

      Itself / Rae Armantrout.

       pages; cm. — (Wesleyan poetry series)

      ISBN 978-0-8195-7467-1 (hardcover: acid-free paper) —

      ISBN 978-0-8195-7568-8 (ebook)

      I. Title.

      PS3551. R455A6 2015

      811’.54—dc23 2014034434

      This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

      5 4 3 2 1

      Cover: This photograph of a spongy decorator crab (Marcocoeloma trispinosum) shows how this particular crab used other living creatures to decorate itself—in this case by including some spectacular zoanthids (Zoanthus sp.). Decorator crabs attach a variety of living and nonliving material to their carapace (exoskeleton shell) as camouflage. This crab, living among a colony of the zoanthids, and was nearly invisible. Its camouflage shows the evolution of “tool use” at this “primitive” level of the animal kingdom. Courtesy of Coral Morphologic, www.coralmorphologic.com

      The animals themselves occupied only the last and largest chamber; the rest were filled with air. The walls between the chambers, known as septa, were fantastically elaborate, folded into intricate ruffles.

      ELIZABETH KOLBERT

      The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History

      CONTENTS

       xi Acknowledgments

       one ITSELF

       3 Chirality

       4 A Conceit

       5 Split

       7 Induction

       8 Conclusion

       10 Pitch

       11 Price Points

       12 Difference

       14 Eden

       16 Sonnet 3

       17 Itself

       18 Rooms

       19 Bivouac

       20 Material

       21 Flo

       22 The New Irony

       23 Sponsor

       24 The Matter

       26 Two and Two

       28 Personhood

       30 Friends

       31 The Couple

       32 Headlong

       33 Fundamentals

       two MEMBRANE

       37 Membrane

       39 Keepers

       41 Poem

       42 Alignment

       43 Habitat

       44 The Wait

       46 Occurrence

       47 End User

       49 Loop

       50 Geography

       51 Persistence

       52 Place Mark

       53 Believing

       54 Head

       55 Control

       56 Difficulty

       57 Rituals

       58 The Times

       60 Evidence

       61 Houses

       62 All Souls

       63 Functions

       64 Our World

       66 Episodes

       67 The Pull

       68 You

       three LIVE THROUGH

       71 Holiday

       72 Glare

       73 The Eye

       75 The New Zombie

       77 Live Through

       78 Not

       79 Kingdom

       80 Kingdom 2 (a poetics)

       81 Kilter

       82 Expression

       83 Afterlife

       84 Blessed

       85 Clearance

       86 Cloudless

       87 Home

       88 The Score

       90 Fall

       92 Exit Row

       93 Deep Time

       94 Device

       95 Lounge Area

       97 New Way

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS