Conjure

Finalist of Big Other Book Award for Poetry, given by Big Other, 2020

Rae Armantrout has always taken pleasure in uncertainties and conundrums, the tricky nuances of language and feeling. In Conjure that pleasure is matched by dread; fascination meets fear as the poet considers the emergence of new life (twin granddaughters) into an increasingly toxic world: the Amazon smolders, children are caged or die crossing rivers and oceans, and weddings make convenient targets for drone strikes. These poems explore the restless border between self and non-self and ask us to look with new eyes at what we're doing.

CARE

Dress like you care!
Eat like you care!
Care like you care!

You don't think
apples just grow on trees,
do you?

*

A fish taps a clam
against a bony knob
of coral
to crack its shell –

which demonstrates intelligence
yes, but
is the fish
pleased with itself?

*

Alone in your crib,
you form syllables.

Are you happy when one
is like another?

Add yourself
to yourself.

Now you have someone