“What is the Purpose of Barnacles”: A Critique of Materialization in Rae Armantrout’s Finalists

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Rae Armantraout is a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet. She has authored over two dozen collections and won numerous literary awards. She has been cited as an “ana-lyrical” poet for her lyrical voice and analytical approach towards life and ethics in the world she sees naked. Armantrout is widely considered an eco-poet and has voiced mainly about environmental issues and children. Similar issues have been traced in her recent poetry collection Finalists (2023) which echoes the dual nature of human existence- the final generation on earth and finalists of a competition who were close to winning but ended up being a runner-up. Through this paper, I will honour the oeuvre of Rae Armantrout and her place in contemporary American poetry. At its core, I will analyze the methodology of eco poetics in her recent poetry collection Finalists and re-examine the critique of materialization exemplified in the collection through a variety metaphors and linguistic ambiguity. Poems in this collection ‘decontextualize’ the connection between ‘object’ and ‘experience’ with her analytical approach towards commodifying human sentiments. Her primary concern lies with children and non-human entities. She critiques that Material objects, whether physical or digital, carry traces of their past existence, highlighting the transient nature of materialization in an ever-changing world.