Rae Armantrout
Comments & Themes
1) Identify the place of Rae Armantrout’s poetry within the Language Poets.
2) Identify, in the poems shown, the poetic technique that Armantrout defines as “Cheshire Poetics.”
3) Which is the position of the lyrical I in Armantrout’s poems?
4) Comment on the way Armantrout deals with science, religion, death and language in her poems.
5) Is Armantrout’s a poetry for “suburban lives”? Give reasons for your answer.
6) Compare Armantrout’s poetry with that of her acknowledged influences (Williams and Dickinson).
7) Compare Armantrout’s poetry with that of the poets with whom she has been compared (Lorine Niedecker, Rachel Blau Duplessis).
8) Analyze metalinguistic commentary in poems: commentaries about the nature of the metaphor, the functions of language, etc.