Conjure

"How did the synthesis / cross the abyss?" A question each of us has been asking ever since we emerged from the tunnel of our mother, and one that poses itself more loudly as we near the next such channel. 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. One third of all adults seem bent on killing another third, while the remainder passively watches, hoping that nobody gets too extreme. These poems explore the restless border between self and non-self. One and another tussle and blur. As Armantrout writes in «Conjure,» «In a sentimental story // there is only one / of something // one newborn, one moment» or one place for our attention to land, while in fact there are countless species dwindling to extinction. These poems ask us to look with new eyes at what we've done and continue to do.