Rae Armantrout

Rae Armantrout (born April 13, 1947) is an American poet generally associated with the Language poets. She has published more than two dozen books, including both poetry and prose. Armantrout retired in 2024 from the University of California, San Diego, where she was Professor of Poetry and Poetics.

Armantrout was awarded the 2009 National Book Critics Circle Award for her book Versed which was also nominated for the National Book Award. Versed later received the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

Early life Armantrout was born in Vallejo, California. An only child, she was raised among military communities on naval bases, predominantly in San Diego. In her autobiography True (1998), she describes herself as having endured an insular childhood, a sensitive child of working class, Methodist fundamentalist parents.

In 1965, while living in the Allied Gardens district with her parents, Armantrout attended San Diego State University, intending to major in anthropology. During her studies she transferred to English and American literature, later studying at the University of California, Berkeley.

Armantrout was one of a group of ten poets who participated in The Grand Piano: An Experiment In Collective Autobiography. Writing for these volumes began in 1998 and the first of its 10 volumes was published in November 2006.

Wobble, published in November 2018, was a finalist for the 2018 National Book Award for Poetry.

Style Armantrout was a member of the original West Coast Language group. Although Language poetry can be seen as advocating a poetics of nonreferentiality, Armantrout's work, focusing as it often does on the local and the domestic, resists such definitions. Unlike most of the group, her work is grounded in experience of the local and domestic worlds and she is regarded by some as the most lyrical of the Language Poets.

In a published interview with Ben Lerner for BOMB Magazine, Armantrout said that she is more likely to write a prose poem "when [she] hear the voice of a conventional narrator in [her] head."

Reception Critic Stephanie Burt at the Boston Review commented:

Personal life Armantrout married Chuck Korkegian in 1971, whom she had dated since her first year at the university. Armantrout resides in the Seattle area. Entanglements (Wesleyan University Press, 2020) Notice (Wesleyan University Press, 2024)

Prose True (Atelos, 1998) - memoir; republished in Collected Prose The Grand Piano: An Experiment In Collective Autobiography (with Bob Perelman, Barrett Watten, Steve Benson, Carla Harryman, Tom Mandel, Ron Silliman, Kit Robinson, Lyn Hejinian, and Ted Pearson) (Mode A/This Press, 2007) Collected Prose (Singing Horse Press, 2007);

List of poems