Matt Raymond from the Library of Congress speaks with Rae Armantrout, who appeared at the 2010 National Book Festival on September 25, 2010, on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

Biography

Rae Armantrout is the 2010 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for poetry for “Versed” (Wesleyan Poetry Press), which the Pulitzer committee cited 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.” The National Endowment for the Arts has funded publication of her work. Armantrout published her first book of poems, “Extremities,” in 1978. She is active in Southern California’s literary community and her other books include “The Invention of Hunger,” “Precedence,” “Necromance,” “Made to Seem,” “The Pretext” and “Veil: New and Selected Poems.” Poet Robert Creeley has said her work possesses a “clarity of syntax” that features “the calm solidness of words.” Armantrout lives in California.