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 that: "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 slender
"Armantrout, winner of the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, observes the world through a lens that zooms in, magnifies, critiques, and describes with precision and pragmatism. The poems are also concerned with how language and meaning are made and how that subsequently affects one's experience of the world. Whether it is the likes and shares of social media, the next generation of AI, o
Sara Verstynen
"Go Figure-this collection is full of the delights of Armantrout's inquisitive mind, sleight of language, and distinctive telescopic and microscopic juxtapositions. Armantrout's sharp-eyed approach to language and meaning has always been especially attuned to our times, when fragmentary images and sayings brush up against each other in our overstimulated lives. Armantrout keenly describes the stak
