Background
Poet and essayist Rae Armantrout was born in Vallejo, California, in 1947 and grew up in San Diego. Graduating from the University
of California, Berkeley, in 1970, she studied under Denise Levertov. Armantrout also received a master's degree in creative
writing at San Francisco State University in 1975. Armantrout is the author of many books, including, Versed (2009), for which she won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. She also was a Guggenheim Fellow in Poetry in 2008 and received
a National Book Critics Circle AwardA founding member of the West Coast "Language Poetry" movement, Armantrout worked closely
with a dynamic group of writers including Ron Silliman, Lyn Hejinian, Bob Perelman, Steve Benson, Barret Watten, Tom Mandel,
and Carla Harryman. Although Language poetry can be seen as advocating a poetics of nonreferentiality, Armantrout's work,
focusing as it often does on the local and the domestic, resists such definitions. Armantrout's work has been the subject
of numerous essays (some of which are gathered in A Wild Salience: The Writings of Rae Armantrout, a collection dedicated to her work), and an entry in the Dictionary of Literary Biography (vol. 193). In addition to her literary output, Armantrout taught at the University of California, San Diego, for more than
two decades.
Restrictions
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Availability
The collection is open for research, with the exception of the born-digital materials, which are closed until processed. Note
that material must be requested at least 36 hours in advance of intended use. Two files in the 2022 addendum are restricted
until 2032 and 2037.