Two Poems by Rae Armantrout
"I've dreamed this before, / I shouldn't be surprised"
OTHERS
Last night Donna said, “Why would anyone’s dreams
interest someone else?
*
“Oh yeah,” I think
in the dream
where my legs are too weak
to climb the stairs,
“I’ve dreamed this before,
I shouldn’t be surprised”—
as if surprise
was the problem.
And I have dreamed it
often, if that helps
though, in “real life”
my legs are fine
and the one who should know
must be someone else.
DETAILS
I know I’m falling asleep when I realize the words and pictures in my mind are more riveting than they have any right to be “on their own”—whatever that means. And now, of course, I’m wide-awake wondering what all this reminds me of.
I’m wondering if the focus on what’s known as “detail,” say in a painting or story, might be an example of metonymy and if metonymy doesn’t have a lot in common with Freud’s idea of the fetish where a foot or a shoe stands in for—is it always a dick?
Rae Armantrout’s recent book Go Figure came out from Wesleyan in August of 2024. Armantrout’s poems have appeared in journals and anthologies including several editions of The Best American Poetry series, The Norton Anthology of Postmodern American Poetry, Poetry, The New Yorker, Lana Turner, Granta, and The Nation. In 2010 her book Versed won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. She is the current judge of the Yale Younger Poets Prize.
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