So that the best thing you could do, it seemed, was climb inside the machine that was language and feel what it wanted or was capable of doing at any point, steering only occasionally.
The best thing was to let language speak its piece while standing inside it – not like a knight in armor exactly, not like a mascot in a chicken suit.
The best thing was to create in the reader or listener an uncertainty as to where the voice she heard was coming from so as to frighten her a little.
Why should I want to frighten her?
RAE ARMANTROUT has fifteen previous books including Versed, which received a Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Award, and a National Book Critics Circle Award; Finalists; Conjure; Wobble (finalist for a National Book Award); Partly: New and Selected Poems; Itself; Just Saying; and Money Shot. Armantrout is Professor Emerita of Writing at the University of California at San Diego. She has been published in many anthologies, including, The Oxford Book of American Poetry, and Scribner’s Best American Poetry, and in such magazines as, Harpers, The New Yorker, American Poetry Review, Boston Review, Scientific American, Chicago Review, and the Los Angeles Times Book Review.