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Rae Armantrout

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Rae Armantrout is a prominent American poet and writer. She is widely recognized for her association with the Language poets. This group was a movement of writers on the West Coast. Armantrout has published more than two dozen books. These works include both poetry and prose. Her writing is noted for its unique style and depth. She has earned significant respect within the literary community through her extensive career.

Armantrout uses specific techniques to build meaning in her writing. She focuses on the stanza or the section as her basic unit of meaning. A stanza is a group of lines in a poem. She also writes prose poetry, which is poetry written in a style similar to ordinary sentences. She chooses this form when she hears a conventional narrator's voice in her head. A key part of her method involves the use of line breaks. She credits William Carlos Williams with teaching her how line breaks can create suspense. These breaks can also destabilize meaning through a deliberate delay.

Her work is often categorized by its relationship to the Language poetry movement. Many Language poets advocate for a poetics of nonreferentiality. This means the poetry does not always point to specific things in the real world. However, Armantrout's work resists this strict definition. Her poems are firmly grounded in the experience of the local and the domestic. Because of this connection to everyday life, she is regarded as the most lyrical of the Language poets. This lyricism gives her work a musical and emotional quality.

Armantrout's life and education shaped her path as a writer. She was born on April 13, 1947, in Vallejo, California. She was an only child raised in military communities near naval bases in San Diego. Her parents were working-class and Methodist fundamentalists. In 1965, she attended San Diego State University. She originally intended to major in anthropology. She later transferred to English and American literature. She also studied at the University of California, Berkeley. At Berkeley, she studied with the poet Denise Levertov and befriended Ron Silliman.

Her professional career has been marked by many prestigious honors. She published her first book of poetry, titled *Extremities*, in 1978. In 2009, her book *Versed* won the National Book Critics Circle Award. That same book was also nominated for the National Book Award. In 2010, *Versed* received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Armantrout has also been a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2008. She received a California Arts Council Fellowship in 1989. She has also won two Fund For Poetry Grants.

Armantrout has contributed to many famous literary collections and projects. Her poems appear in *The Oxford Book of American Poetry* and *The Best American Poetry*. She was included in *The Best American Poetry* in 1988, 2001, 2002, 2004, and 2007. She was also part of a group of ten poets for *The Grand Piano*. This was an experiment in collective autobiography. The project began in 1998, and the first of its ten volumes was published in November 2006. Her book *Wobble*, published in 2018, was a finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry.

Beyond her writing, Armantrout has dedicated much of her life to teaching. She held a long tenure at the University of California, San Diego. There, she served as a Professor of Poetry and Poetics. She is now retired from her teaching career. She currently resides in the Seattle area. Her influence continues through her many books, such as *Money Shot*, *Itself*, and *Conjure*. Her work remains a vital part of contemporary American literature.

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