Notice

Author: Rae Armantrout

Publisher: Wesleyan University Press (2024)

Notice is the product of a life-long interest in natural sciences by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Rae Armantrout. The collection draws poems from her previous books, calling our attention to how language frames and shapes our relationships to climate and kin. The title is a call to take heed of the signs coming to us daily. "Notice" can be read as a noun or a verb. As a noun it might be thought of as a public warning. The author has selected poems that respond in various ways to the environmental crisis which we all see developing and about which we don't seem to be able to take appropriate action. The poem "Preparedness," for instance, hazards a wild guess about the cause of this failure to act. Some of the poems here address the problem directly. In others, the focus is broader or the approach more subtle. There are even a few poems in which the author allows for something like hope.