Rae Armantrout celebrates a new book
Finalists
published by Wesleyan University Press
Finalists contains Armantrout’s two most recent projects available together in one book, including the long form poem Threat Landscape. What will we call the last generation before the looming end times? With Finalists Rae Armantrout suggests one option. What sort of awards can such “finalists” expect? What do they—what do we—have to lose, she seems to ask, except the biosphere and our ever-inquisitive children? Brilliant and irascible, playful and intense, Armantrout nails the current moment’s debris fields and super computers, its sizzling malaise and confusion, with an exemplary immensity of heart and a boundless capacity for humor. The poems in this book find (and create) beauty in midst of the ongoing crisis.
Rae Armantrout is the Pulitzer Prize winning author of fifteen books of poetry. She has published ten books with Wesleyan University Press, including Wobble, Entanglements, Partly, and Versed. She lives in Everett, Washington. Additional honors for her work include the 2009 National Book Critics Circle award, finalist for the 2009 National Book Award for Versed, and a shortlisted for the 2018 National Book Award for Wobble.
Lyn Hejinian is a poet, essayist, translator and publisher. She is often associated with the Language poets and is known for her landmark work My Life, as well as her book of essays, The Language of Inquiry.
Sponsored by the City Lights Foundation