Go Figure

by Rae Armantrout

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 "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 slendereye-stalksstand straight up

from its scuttlingcarapace—

the way vigilancetakes many forms?

*

That bird check-marks morningonce more

like someone who gets upto make sure

the door is locked.

*

I soundlike I knowwhat I'm talking about.

I sound like a comedian.

Genres: Poetry

120 pages, Hardcover

Published August 6, 2024

About the author

Rae Armantrout is an American poet generally associated with the Language poets. Armantrout was born in Vallejo, California but grew up in San Diego. She has published ten books of poetry and has also been featured in a number of major anthologies. Armantrout currently teaches at the University of California, San Diego, where she is Professor of Poetry and Poetics.

On March 11, 2010, Armantrout was awarded the 2009 National Book Critics Circle Award for her book of poetry Versed published by the Wesleyan University Press, which had also been nominated for the National Book Award. The book later earned the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Armantrout’s most recent collection, Money Shot, was published in February 2011. She is the recipient of numerous other awards for her poetry, including most recently an award in poetry from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts in 2007 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2008.

Reviews

[Peggy]

I purchased this book because I found some poems by Armantrout online and realized that she was a literary descendant of Lorine Niedecker, my mentor. I think Kay Ryan and R.A. have something in common, too. Dry humor. This is my favorite poetry: spare, quirky, chiseled poems with space built in for responding. I read Go Figure in the morning, as many pages as I wanted, for about a week. This was enjoyable time.

[David]

I love these poems. Not sure when I first read this poet, maybe in Lyn Hejinian's class at Berkeley? Or maybe in Doug Messerli's wonderful huge volume From the Other Side of the Century? In any case, I was at the library, just looking over the new arrival shelves, and I saw this and grabbed it. Such a great title, I might have read it even if I didn't recognize the author. Anyway, it's good stuff. Here's one poem, entitled "Story Line" (p. 19), to give you an idea of why I love this book:

Kids like talking animals
as well or better than
they do people-

until the wolf eats gramma

then tells Red
a love story.

After that, children
are concerned with trajectories.
_._

The gulls are worked up
this morning, swooping and circling
one dilapidated house.

The crows lining the wire
ignore them.

This is the beginning
of a story
with two characters,

but the narrator
has gone missing.

[Sarah Crucilla]

Armantrout is a master of melding seemingly disparate moments into meaningful poems. This collection questions poetry, modernization, and the individual living through it all. I enjoyed her usage of textbook explanations of scientific concepts in conjunction with her signature short lines and deep reflection. While some poems fell a little flat for me, the majority were thought-provoking. Definitely a collection I will be re-reading.

[Patricia N. McLaughlin]

In this collection, the poet seems to be dashing off stream-of-consciousness observations about life whenever something strikes her attention—sort of like steel on flint, creating sparks of meaning, sometimes enough to catch other words afire to make enough light to see the connections. As the poet muses,

“Thinking is hard,
but thoughts just happen

because of the near
rhyming
of sparks.” (p. 73)

“Who thinks she knows / where meaning is” (p. 78) is likely to get trapped in a thicket of syllables. Fair warning, make of these poems what you will, dear reader.


“Our earliest ancestors
were accelerants.

They ate change.
Where does that leave us?”
—from “Simply,” p. 12


“We name things
to know where we are.”
—from “Traveling,” p. 81


“For me it was never
about what speaks

but about what seems
to speak

while remaining silent.”
—“Never,” p. 111


Favorite Poems:
“Escape Velocity”
“Narrative”
“Machine Learning”
“Debt Economy”
“Proof”
“Further Thought”
“Preconditions”
“What to Call It”
“Stalling”
“Picture This”
“In Practice”
“Traveling”
“Smidgens”
“Never”

[Shawn Galligan]

Armantrout is a masterful poet, and this collection explores the theme of 'figuring' - what it means to label, to understand, to name. The collection is often brutally honest about the state of the world, and while I could not fully call it 'hopeful', I can at least say that it *wants* to be hopeful.

"If it's true / you don't have / to mean it".

[Harry Palacio]

sublime oscillation

Rae a Pulitzer Prize winner is graceful in an arc of sublime spirituality with a brilliant story embedded and beautifully groomed for sex as well as the odd piercing cry for eternity pockmarked with golden flowers flecked with the malice of death, the final illusion

[Seth Arnopole]

One should not judge a book by its cover, but the cover of Go Figure caught my attention and tipped me toward reading it, though I was already familiar with Rae Armantrout. There are plenty of poems in it that I don't understand intellectually, but I somehow understand them on another level, even though these poems are intellectually-oriented.

[Terry]

Short, delightful poems that make you think. Some hit the spot. Some don’t. Go figure.

[Valentine Void]

read for English 146, fall semester sophomore year

[John Back]

Got poems in it

[John Fossett]

A little bit of everything in verse, very nice, especially when she shares an occasional power surge of poetic energy.