Rae Armantrout is an American poet and educator. She wrote numerous poems and now, she is considered as one of the prolific writers who contribute in contemporary literature.
Background
Mary Rae Armantrou was born on April 13, 1947 in Vallejo, California, United States. She is a daughter of John William and Hazel Maud (Hackett) Armantrout.
Her father served in the Navy and according to Armantrout, her mother was a great storyteller.
Education
As a teenager, Armantrout read the poetry of William Carlos Williams and Robinson Jeffers.
She first attended San Diego State University, majoring in anthropology. Armantrout later switched her major to English and then transferred to Berkeley.
Armantrout worked at California State University, in San Francisco, as a teaching assistant from 1972 to 1973 and at California State University, in San Diego, as lecturer, from 1979 to 1982. At the University of California, in San Diego and La Jolla, she worked as lecturer, since 1980. As a director or co-director of the New Writing poetry reading series, she was from 1989 to 2002. At California College of Arts and Crafts, in Oakland, California, she was a poet-in-residence, from 2000 to 2001. In 2000, Rae was a poetry workshop instructor at the Naropa University Summer Program, in Boulder, Colorado.
Quotations:
"I write because much of what I see and hear seems wrong somehow. I need to record it and consider it further; I write in order to find or frame for myself the necessary questions. I write to make thought (more) palpable. I'm interested in origin stories, scientific or mythological. I like to play with them, rearrange them, invent new ones. I carry a notebook with me and record impressions, sights, snippets of overheard conversations, etc. After I've done this for several days or weeks, I go through the collected material and look for patterns. Then I try to arrange pieces in order to put them in dialogue, create interesting conjunctions."
Membership
Rae is a member of Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists and Novelists association, Academy American Poets, Poets and Writers.
Interests
Reading science and philosophy
Connections
August 21, 1971, Rae married Charles Matos Korkegian. They have one child, Aaron Mark.