Rae Armantrout

Rae Armantrout (born 13 April 1947) 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 nine 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 .

Overview

Graduating from the University of California, Berkeley in 1970, Armantrout later received a master's degree in creative writing at San Francisco State University in 1975. She was a member of the original West Coast Language group. Although Language poetry can be seen as advocating a poetics of nonreferentiality, Armantrout's work, focusing as it often does on the local and the domestic, resists such definitions [ [http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/hasrg/ablit/amerlit/armant.html Rae Armantrout Papers at Stanford University] ] . However, unlike most of the group, her work is firmly grounded in experience of the local and domestic worlds and she is widely regarded as the most lyrical of the Language Poets. [ [http://www.literaturfestival.com/bios1_3_6_717.html Author Page at "Internationales Literatufestival Berlin"] Armantrout was a Guest of the ILB ( "Internationales Literatufestival Berlin" / Germany ) in 2005]

Her poems have appeared in many anthologies, including "In The American Tree" (National Poetry Foundation), "Language Poetries" (New Directions), , From the Other Side of the Century (Sun & Moon), "Out of Everywhere" (Reality Street), "American Women Poets in the 21st Century: Where Language Meets the Lyric Tradition", (Wesleyan, 2002), "The Oxford Book of American Poetry" (Oxford, UP, 2006) and "The Best American Poetry" of "1988", "2001", "2002", and "2004".

Armantrout has twice received a Fund For Poetry Grant and was a California Arts Council Fellowship recipient in 1989. She is currently one of ten poets working on a project entitled "The Grand Piano: An Experiment In Collective Autobiography." Writing on the volume began in 1998 and the first volume (of a proposed ten) was published in November 2006, and thereafter in three-month intervals.

elected Bibliography

Poetry

*"Extremities" (The Figures, 1978) - poetry
*"The Invention of Hunger" (Tuumba, 1979) - poetry
*"Precedence" (Burning Deck, 1985) - poetry
*"Necromance" (Sun and Moon Press, 1991) - poetry
* "Couverture" (Les Cahiers de Royaumont, 1991) - a selected in French translation
*"Made To Seem" (Sun and Moon Press, 1995) - poetry
*"writing the plot about sets" (Chax, 1998)
*"Veil: New and Selected Poems" (Wesleyan University Press, 2001) - poetry
*"The Pretext" (Green Integer, 2001) - poetry
*"Up to Speed" (Wesleyan, 2004) - poetry
*"Next Life" (Wesleyan, 2007) - poetry
*"Complete Early Poems" (Green Integer, 2008; forthcoming) - early collections, from 1978's "Extremities" to 1995's "Made to Seem" collected here

Prose

*"True" (Atelos, 1998) - prose memoir; republished in "Collected Prose"
*"The Grand Piano: An Experiment In Collective Autobiography" (with Bob Perelman, Barrett Watten, Steve Benson, Carla Harryman, Tom Mandel, Ron Silliman, Kit Robinson, Lyn Hejinian, and Ted Pearson) (Mode A/This Press, 2007)
*"Collected Prose" (Singing Horse Press, 2007) - prose ISBN 0-935162-37-2

Further reading

*"A Wild Salience: The Writing of Rae Armantrout" (Burning Press, 2000; ISBN 1-5871-10253) — featuring essays and poems on or inspired by her work including pieces by Robert Creeley, Susan Wheeler, Hank Lazer, Bob Perelman, Lydia Davis, Lyn Hejinian, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Ron Silliman, Brenda Hillman, Fanny Howe and others
*"A Suite of Poetic Voices": "Interview" (with Manuel Brito), (Santa Brigada, Spain: Kadle Books, 1994)

References

External links

* [http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/armantrout/ Rae Armantrout at EPC]
* [http://www.literaturfestival.com/bios1_3_6_717.html Biography from the international literature festival berlin]
* [http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/hasrg/ablit/amerlit/armant.html Rae Armantrout Papers]
* [http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/1134 Rae Armantrout Exhibit] at the Academy of American Poets
* [http://chicagopostmodernpoetry.com/RaeA.htm Chicago Postmodern Poetry Poet Profile] interview published on-line (June 2004)
* [http://www.epoetry.org/issues/issue3/text/cnotes/ra.html Armantrout Page at "Electronic Poetry Review"] includes biographical information and links to poems, including: "Fieldwork", "Interval", "Greeting", and "Performers"
* [http://www.literaryhistory.com/20thC/Armantrout.htmAn Internet bibliography for Rae Armantrout] from LiteraryHistory.com
* [http://www.greeninteger.com/pipbios_detail.cfm?PIPAuthorID=14 PIP Biography] at Green Integer's website
* [http://jacketmagazine.com/27/arman-essay.html "Cosmology and Me"] this prose piece by Armantrout, appearing on-line in Jacket is republished in the volume "Collected Prose".
* [http://herecomeseverybody.blogspot.com/2005/01/rae-armantrout-has-published-eight.html "Here Comes Everybody" Interview] this interview first appeared on-line January 29, 2005.
* [http://www.thegrandpiano.org/ The Grand Piano] website devoted to the 10 volumes of "Collective Autobiography" by 10 of the so-called "West Coast" group of Language poets, including Armantrout, which began serial publication in November 2006.
* [http://www.beardofbees.com/armantrout.html "7 Poems"] chapbook (available for free download) published by Beard of Bees, an independent, free press in Chicago, Illinois.