Safe Rooms

Acclaimed author Rae Armantrout's remarkable new collection Safe Rooms, explores the undercurrents of modern life with an unflinching eye on human nature, social malaise, and the unsettling ways in which we attempt to protect ourselves from a world that continually undermines our sense of safety. As the title poem says: "your thoughts /roar and echo//around you-originating/god knows where.// You try to plug your ears/but you are an ear/ that can't stop listening." Through poems that examine our darker impulses-our tendencies to self-destruct, to grapple with envy, and to navigate the intricate web of family dynamics-Armantrout captures the complex, often contradictory ways in which we search for meaning and connection. Her work holds a mirror to the forces shaping us, both intimate and vast, showing that the so-called "safe rooms" we construct are fragile, temporary shelters, not havens from the chaos that surrounds us.
[sample poem]


THE UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE


1
An atom "is localized

by an interaction"
the way you surprise yourself

by expressing an opinion
when asked,
one you didn't know you had

and may not hold
for long.





2



A subatomic particle is not

its mass or spin



the way a person

is not a body



and a poem is not

what it says.