Two Poems

By Rae ArmantroutDecember 30, 2018

Two Poems
These poems appear in the latest issue of the LARB Print Quarterly Journal: No. 20  Childhood

To receive the LARB Quarterly Journal, become a member  or purchase a copy at your local bookstore.

 

 

¤



Closer


The critics say
we’ve finally begun to move
from solipsism
to futility.

It’s true
that standing still
is exhausting.

*

As a way out
of myself
(and into someone near me),

more gripping
than vampire stories,
more realistic
than falling in love,

I watch toddlers
form thoughts
and act on them.

 


What Follows


It’s a good thing

mind’s distributed.

“It wasn’t me,”

one says,

repeatedly.

“I haven’t died.”

*

Each tract,

thus bracketed,

waits

for what precedes,

what follows.

*

I accept defeat.

To accept defeat
is to regress,

to go back
where you came from.

This may be
the fountain of youth!

I claim it
for myself.

 

¤


Rae Armantrout is a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet. Her book Wobble was a finalist for 2018 National Book Award.

LARB Contributor

Rae Armantrout’s most recent books, Versed, Money Shot, Just Saying, Itself, Partly: New and Selected Poems, and Entanglements (a chapbook selection of poems in conversation with physics), were published by Wesleyan University Press. In 2010, her book Versed won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and The National Book Critics Circle Award. Wobble is a new volume of her poems. She is recently retired from UC San Diego where she was professor of poetry and poetics. She currently lives in the Seattle area.

Share

LARB Staff Recommendations

Did you know LARB is a reader-supported nonprofit?


LARB publishes daily without a paywall as part of our mission to make rigorous, incisive, and engaging writing on every aspect of literature, culture, and the arts freely accessible to the public. Help us continue this work with your tax-deductible donation today!