Rae Armantrout QUOTES

1 " A sense of mission lost
in ink's
jagged outcrops.

I was trying to tell myself
what I must have known
before

in a form
I wouldn't recognize at first. "

― Rae Armantrout , Next Life

2 " We are all full of discourses that we only half understand and half mean. "

― Rae Armantrout

3 " The fear
that all this
will end.
The fear
that it won’t. "

― Rae Armantrout

4 " I know you by your willingness. "

― Rae Armantrout , Versed

5 " Metaphor forms a crust beneath which the crevasse of each experience. "

― Rae Armantrout , Versed

6 " The feeling of emptiness is a pre-existing condition. Jargon forces intimacy. "

― Rae Armantrout , Versed

7 " When I dreamed about flying,
it was as a skill
I needed to regain. "

― Rae Armantrout , The Pretext

8 " I'm composed largely of what the streets and rooms look like, of how to arrive 'just' here. "

― Rae Armantrout , Versed

9 " So much happiness is caged in language, ready to burst out anytime and fade "

― Rae Armantrout , Versed

10 " Simple

Complex systems can arise
from simple rules.

It's not
that we want to survive,
it's that we've been drugged
and made to act
as if we do

while all the while
the sea breaks
and rolls, painlessly, under.

If we're not copying it,
we're lonely.

Is this the knowledge
that demands to be
passed down?

Time is made from swatches
of heaven and hell.

If we're not killing it,
we're hungry. "

― Rae Armantrout , Versed

11 " Mozart creates a universe out of pleasantries. "

― Rae Armantrout , Versed

12 " Carried by light, images remain while sensation is so evanescent as to be always beyond belief. "

― Rae Armantrout , Versed

13 " The future is all around here.' It's a place, anyplace where we don't exist. "

― Rae Armantrout , Versed

14 " But here I hold your dream in my poem. "

― Rae Armantrout , Versed

15 " Metaphor is ritual sacrifice. It kills the look-alike. No, metaphor is homeopathy. "

― Rae Armantrout , Versed

16 " this route is only one of several imaginary paths. "

― Rae Armantrout , Versed

17 " Now light sits in the chairs "

― Rae Armantrout , Versed

18 " Perfect molecules of plastic sheet the seas. "

― Rae Armantrout , Versed

19 " We sleep together in the dark but confuse light with love. "

― Rae Armantrout , Versed

20 " Ends Meet

1
Could be
time is practice,

balance,

the action
executed in the mind
before and after.

Where does mind end?

2
We mark a break
with what has come before,

come through the door,

down the hatch.

Not a clean break
exactly.

3
Our life was rehearsal,
Mother almost said

so that we believed
we would escort her

to the future
where she could be happy. "

― Rae Armantrout , Money Shot

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