And the Pulitzer Goes To: Rae Armantrout

Rae Armantrout was awarded the 2010 Pulitzer Prize in poetry for Versed, described as "a book striking for its wit and linguistic inventiveness, offering poems that are often little thought-bombs detonating in the mind long after the first reading."  Enjoy this poem, which is included in the book and first published in Poetry magazine.


Click here to listen to the poem read by the poet herself.

Birth Order

1

You’re it.

It is (you are)

an error

with an arsenal

of disguises,

with a system

of incorporation

built in,

with enmity,

with direction.

2

What have you got to lose?

This

gray tile roof,

gray sky scored

by power lines.

This framed measure

of distance

as intimacy.

Shadows of fingers

(mine)

move across the white page.

Anyone

could write this.

That word—

“this”—

firstborn,

unnecessary.

by Rae Armantrout
from Versed. ( Wesleyan University Press, 2009)
courtesy of The Poetry Foundation