INTERVIEW – Better Than The Times

Rae Armantrrout

Rae Armantrout Interview Questions

First, it is an honor to interview you again. The last time, in 2018, you had just published the delicious collection, Wobble. I note in the past 6 years you have continued to publish at a fairly prolific rate.

1)So first question, and maybe it is unseemly to ask, but do you see yourself slowing down? As a fan, I hope not!

RA: Until quite recently, I seemed to be speeding up! I’m still writing quite a lot, but I’m looking for ways to slow down, if that’s the right term, to produce something a bit longer.

2)In a recent poem published in the Atlantic, Specimen, we meet the narrator’s grandmother. I am not going to ask you if Rachel really was YOUR grandmother, because as is the case with all the best of your poetry, she is a little bit of everyone’s grandmother. What I am curious about is when you create such a character, are you conscious of who/what you are creating, or do you just tell a story and the meanings fall where they may?

SPECIMENS

1

When I was a child, my grandmother Rachel lived in a small room next to mine.

She wore what were called “housecoats” and put her hair up in “pin-curls.”

She raised roses.

She enjoyed watching pro-wrestlers on television. Her favorite was Gorgeous George.

And she loved the piano-player, Liberace. I remember the rhinestones on his cape.

She spoke very little.

I assumed Rachel
must be typical of something

2

Listen, the god who made you
cannot know

anything about you.

It can’t become distracted.

It has to keep producing
orchids with monkey faces,
caterpillars with pink feathers,

and the one who floats
on her own reflection.

RA: I think it was hard to read the whole poem in The Atlantic unless you are a subscriber. For that reason, I want to include it here, even though your question concerns only the first part

 Rachel was my grandmother. I was named for her. I lived beside her for eighteen years and still didn’t really know her. Children tend to take whatever they’re given as the norm and not question it too much There are so many questions I want to ask now when it’s too late. She was a character. But, yes, this situation is something others experience too, I think. Most of us probably wish we knew more about the people we grew up around—but time moves forward and those relationships remain in the past. I don’t think the poem began with that general, quasi-abstract concern though. It started with me wondering why I didn’t know more about my own grandmother.

You don’t mention the second part and maybe you couldn’t see it in the magazine. It takes on the same issue (the limits to knowing and being known) from a more oblique angle. More whimsically, maybe. I think the orchid and the caterpillar with pink feathers came out of remembering Liberace. In the last two lines, I originally had in mind a lotus flower that “floats on its own reflection.” I chose not to include that word (lotus) knowing something would be lost but hoping something would be gained by the omission. It broadens the possible reference. Am I floating on my own reflection like Narcissus? Is that what consciousness is or does??

3)The last time we spoke, you said some of the best advice about writing you had ever received was to think about why you are ending a line, about where to end a poem, and especially to trust the words, do you have more to say on that?

RA: It was Denise Levertov who recommended I pay more attention to line breaks when I was in her undergrad writing class at Berkeley. A line break can create suspense, surprise, a sense of multiple possibilities. That is useful advice, but maybe not the very most important thing to know. More generally, I think a poet needs to love words and, once they start on a poem, follow where the words lead. You will probably start with a perception, a memory maybe. Once the poem is in progress, I think it’s a good idea to keep looking back at the words you’ve already written: what do they suggest?  Keep looking out at the world, yes, but also take direction from what you’ve already put down.  For instance, in “Specimens,” the idea of the caterpillar with “pink feathers” (a real thing, by the way) was suggested by thinking of Liberace’s costumes—not totally consciously—but that’s where it probably came from and why it felt right. Fancy caterpillars were certainly not on my mind when I started thinking about my grandmother!

4)In 2001, you wrote Anti-Short Story, 18 syllables, 23 counting the title, but I have found it to be so powerful and instructive to me, as a writer, to think about what I am writing, as a thing independent from me, to just let it be. How did you come up with that poem?

RA: Most of my poems are based on experiences–things I’ve seen mixed up sometimes with things I’ve read.   In that case, I did see a girl (a young woman) just flying down the street. To me it looked like an image of joy, though, of course, she may have had a practical reason for running. So the poem was a response to that sight, but it was probably also a way of saying “no” to the standard narrative poem of that period (late 70s.) When I was young, I read Basho and Issa as well as short poems by WCW. They showed how much you can do with just a little.

5)As a poet, I have come to appreciate that there are almost as many ways to write as there are writers, but when I read any of your poems, I feel like “there is something there” even if sometimes, I feel like I may not be getting it. When I write a poem, I pretty never “put something in it. I simply write what I have to say and then others come along and see things I didn’t know were there. I wonder if you are more likely, as I heard Toni Morrison describe her novel writing process, as a case of having a point to make, a point to explore, so she would write a novel as a vehicle for that purpose. Do you write your poems to make a point? Obviously, many of us see them as making points, as well as being a real treat to read for the joy of watching how you lay words down next to each other, but what is your perspective?

RA: Thank you. I don’t write because I have a point to make. I write to bring points (plural) together into a new constellation. I see things from various perspectives, as I’m sure Morrison does too. I write a poem in a state of metaphorical synesthesia, blending sights, feelings, ideas, memories in a sort of stew. This answer has already stepped into some unfortunately mixed metaphors—points in a constellation and stew? For me (and I imagine for many others) every experience is complex, full of mixed feelings, tugs in different directions. It’s important to me that my poems represent that complexity.

6)In a previous interview, elsewhere, you mentioned that you don’t write poems about politics, but as you write about life, and as life is impacted by so much politics, the politics gets into your poetry. I think you were mostly, at that time, talking about climate change and how it impacted your world in California. Of, course climate change has only become more of an issue, but I am wondering, given that you grew up in the post war world of America, when the White Straight Christian Male dominance was in its peak, but also the movement for women’s equality, civil rights, and other challenges to that era were coming to the forefront, and later we had Stonewall, the anti-war, environment, American Indian Movement, Farm Workers Rights, Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, Standing Rock, and so many other struggles, including the horror of Palestine, at the moment, beyond seeing the daily impact of climate crisis in your own backyard, how has growing up in and living in this world of struggle shaped your views of capitalism/socialism/anarchy/etc. How much of these views do you see bleeding into your words on the page? Do you see these struggles as related? Or are they mostly related in that they and the backlash against them to be a statement about where the world and America are going?

RA: Did I really say that? If so, that surprises me. I think my problem is with the word “about.” To write about something is to write from outside looking in. I write from inside an increasingly predatory capitalist system that seems determined to keep growing, keep burning fossil fuels and polluting the atmosphere until the world is no longer habitable. This has become clearer and clearer. I write from a relatively privileged position as a white citizen of a powerful nation. I am enmeshed in a harmful system that has more or less benefitted me, even though I grew up lower middle class and have sometimes been poor. Because of my privilege, I am interested in the psychology of complicity. For instance, I’m more apt to write about the language people use to justify war than I am to write about images from war zones.  Mercifully, I have more access to that. My view of war is, so far, highly mediated. I see the same screen images we’ve all seen. They’re horrific. Most of the things you list have entered my poems in one way or another. For instance, there are a lot of poems about money and financial manipulation in my book Money Shot from 2011. My recent chapbook, Notice, is a selection of poems somehow adjacent to the climate crisis. I’m interested in how human beings tend to get things so wrong so often.

7)I have often wondered, when you get to be well-known, maybe even famous, what effect that has on your work. I don’t really have to wonder “Is this good enough to be an “Anthony poem.” I have the advantage of not having the world look over my mostly unknown shoulder. Do you ever start to wonder, “Is this good enough to be a Rae Armantrout poem?” If so, how do you deal with it?

RA: That’s a hard one. I do sometimes wonder if my work is changing and, if so, if it’s for better or worse. So in that sense, I’m competing with my former self. I try not to get stuck in that mindset though. Something can change without either improving or deteriorating. Those aren’t the only two options. I wonder all the time what makes a poem “good?” What makes a poem work? I think we should question ourselves, challenge ourselves—but not to the point where we’re paralyzed. I use friends to break that cycle of doubt. I will often show a new poem to a few close poet-friends, especially poems I’m having some trouble with. Then I’m not just talking to myself. (Generally, though, if I show something to more than one person, they will disagree about it,  at least on some points) The other thing to do is just put the piece away for a few days—or maybe even weeks—and then look at it with fresh eyes yourself. I don’t worry so much about the audience of strangers, though I know it exists. I wonder first what the people close to me will think. That helps keep me grounded.

---

Rae Armantrout is a Pulitzer Prize winning poet, retired Professor of Poetry and Poetics at UC, San Diego, she won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer for Versed. She and long time friend Ron Silliman are credited with founding the West Coast wing of the LANGUAGE POETS. She has published more than two dozen books, including poetry and prose, her most recent book of poetry is Finalists (Wesleyan University Press, 2022)

Four of Rae’s other recent poems can be found here.