Philly Poetry Chapbook Review is pleased to feature Rae Armantrout’s poem “Further Thought” as our first monthly featured poem from a full-length book for Issue 7: Winter 2025. You can find more poetry in their recent book, Go Figure now available from Wesleyan University Press.
Further Thought
Genesis 2
When words first had meanings
that lasted,
that hung in the air
after their occasions
had dissolved,
it was eerie.
I get that.
Words were gods—
arbitrary, deathless.
Not every bird or bush would talk,
but the idea that any might
was palpable.
To be at the source and not
see it
must have driven people mad.
Revelations 2
“This means that;
No, that means this!”
the twins say,
urgently.
The mystery of the seven stars
and the mystery of the seven candlesticks
Balance
on one foot
as long as
you can
(This poem was first published by Harvard Review. It is reprinted here with the author’s permission.)
Book Review: on Go Figure, poems by Rae Armantrout by PCR editor Aiden Hunt for On the Seawall.
About the Poem
This poem is about the troubled human relationship to meaning. I started writing the first part, “Genesis,” when I was thinking about what it must have been like for hominids when they first communicated using mutually understood words. I mean one year they didn’t and then, the year after that, they did? Strange! Because I was raised on the Bible, I thought about Genesis—not so much Adam and Eve as the voice out of the burning bush or the whirlwind. The second part came from watching my twin granddaughters acquiring language. They quarreled a lot about what they meant. Since I had already reached for Genesis, I decided to go to Revelations. The lines about the seven stars and the seven candlesticks come from that.. I don’t mean to imply that language makes people crazy—or maybe I do.
Author Bio
Rae Armantrout is the award-winning author of eighteen books of poetry, most recently Go Figure, Finalists and Conjure. Her collection Versed won a National Book Critics Circle Award, a Pulitzer Prize, and was a finalist for a National Book Award. Her work has appeared in countless anthologies including Best American Poetry, In The American Tree and Language Poetries.
From Go Figure
The poems in Pulitzer Prize-winner Rae Armantrout’s new book are concerned with “this ongoing attempt/ to catalog the world” in a time of escalating disasters. From the bird who “check-marks morning/once more//like someone who gets up/to make sure// the door is locked” to bat-faced orchids, raising petals like light sails as if about to take flight, these poems make keen visual and psychological observations. The title Go Figure speaks to the book’s focus on the unexpected, the strange, and the seemingly incredible so that: “We name things/ to know where we are.” Moving with the deliberate precision that is a hallmark of Armantrout’s work, they limn and refract, questioning how we make sense of the world, and ultimately showing how our experience of reality is exquisitely enfolded in words. “It’s true things fall apart.” Armantrout writes. ‘Still, by thinking/we heat ourselves up.”
Contents
Book Excerpt: Further Thought by Rae Armantrout
Read the featured Excerpt Poem of the Month for January 2025, “Further Thought” from Go Figure by Rae Armantrout, along with a few words from the poet.
Read five poems by poet A.L. Nielsen, our first biweekly poet of the Winter 2025 issue, along with a few words about the poem “When We Walked”.
Chapbook Poem: The Poem as an Act of Betrayal by Benjamin S. Grossberg
Read the featured Chapbook Poem of the Month for January 2025, “The Poem as an Act of Betrayal” from As Are Right Fit by Benjamin S. Grossberg, along with a few words from the poet.
Jan. ‘25: Year One: What worked, what didn’t, and what to expect
Editor Aiden Hunt looks back at our first year and discusses changes to Philly Poetry Chapbook Review in 2025.