Rae Armantrout's poetry is renowned for its sharp social observation combined with an eloquent and often sparse lyricism. Armantrout was a key member of the West Coast poetry community that emerged in the 1970s and later became associated with Language poetry. She worked closely with a dynamic group of writers including Ron Silliman, Lyn Hejinian, Bob Perelman, Steve Benson, Barrett Watten, Tom Mandel, and Carla Harryman. Although Language writing has been viewed as advocating a poetics of nonreferentiality, Armantrout's writing immediately undercuts such sweeping definitions. Her poetry continues to explore the pull between the familiar and the unknown in which meaning is often translated as shifting somewhere between private thought and social process. She is suspicious of the term language-oriented because "it seems to imply division between language and experience, thought and feeling, inner and outer." Strongly influenced by George Oppen's attention to detail, Armantrout agrees with him...