selected armantrout

at linda russo's prompting this past weekend i reread some of rae armantrout's books. linda was saying that she finds rae's "voice" or "attitude" coming into her own work far more often than the notley, mayer or kyger i was finding myself hearing, which made me want to go back and reread rae's work, which i've probably not done for eight years or so (tho i'm pretty sure i read the pretext not long after it came out).

and this is something i've been thinking about doing on a blog for a while, namely posting lists of "best poems" or "favorite poems" from a given book or by a given author. sort of like one's own personal "selected poems of [name]." maybe it should happen on a separate blog, or there could be a multi-author blog for each poet. ideally one could or would where possible include the poems themselves in such lists. but it could also be the kind of thing that other readers could compare with, discuss, etc.

so here's my (provisional of course) selected middle-period rae armantrout.

from Precedence (Burning Deck 1985)
Traveling through the Yard
Compound
Compound 2
Through Walls
Another Tongue
Sigh
Blocks
Secretly
Atmospheric
The Music

from Necromance (Sun & Moon 1991)
Necromance
The Garden
No Matter
Labors
Late Returns
The Unit
Wake Up
Attention
Language of Love
Realism

from Made to Seem (Sun & Moon 1995)
One Remove
My Problem
A Pulse
Crossing
Kinds
Taking Steps
States
The Work