Rae Armantrout

Rae Armantrout has published two books: Extremities (The Figures, 1978), and The Invention of Hunger (Tuumba, 1979). "Fiction" is a reprint from the second. A new book, Precedence, is forthcoming from Burning Deck early in 1985. A review of Extremities, by Susan Howe, recently appeared in The L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Book (Southern Illinois Press, 1984).

WORKING NOTES FROM RAE ARMANTROUT:

Generally it takes me quite a while to write even a short poem. A month might be average. Language begins to accrete around an initially vague impression. The process of turning the gathered material into a "poem" is usually one of seeing potential connections between the previously discrete lines or sections. However, "Through Walls," a relatively long poem for me, was written continuously in the space of a rather charged hour and a half. I wish I could do that more often.

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