The Invention of Hunger

by Rae Armantrout

The Invention of Hunger was designed and printed at Tuumba Press by Lyn Hejinian. Printed in a limited edition of 450 copies.

Genres: Poetry

14 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1979

About the author

Rae Armantrout is an American poet generally associated with the Language poets. Armantrout was born in Vallejo, California but grew up in San Diego. She has published ten books of poetry and has also been featured in a number of major anthologies. Armantrout currently teaches at the University of California, San Diego, where she is Professor of Poetry and Poetics.

On March 11, 2010, Armantrout was awarded the 2009 National Book Critics Circle Award for her book of poetry Versed published by the Wesleyan University Press, which had also been nominated for the National Book Award. The book later earned the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Armantrout’s most recent collection, Money Shot, was published in February 2011. She is the recipient of numerous other awards for her poetry, including most recently an award in poetry from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts in 2007 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2008.

Reviews

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

NATURAL HISTORY

 1

Discomfort marks the boundary.

One early symptom was the boundary.

The invention of hunger.
"I could use energy."

To serve.

Elaborate systems in the service of
far-fetched demands.

The great termite mounds serve
as air-conditioners.

Temperature within must never vary
more than 2 degrees.


 2

Which came first
the need of the system?

Systematic.
System player.
Scheme of Things.

The body considered as a functional unit.
"My system craves calcium."

An organized set of doctrines.

A network formed for the purpose of...

"All I want is you."


 3

was narrowing their options to one,
the next development.

Soldiers have elongate heads and massive mandibles.
Squirtgun heads are found among fiercer species.
Since soldiers cannot feed themselves, each requires
a troupe of attendants.


 4

Her demands had become more elaborate.

He must be blindfolded,
 (Must break off his own wings)
wear this corset laced tight
 (seal up the nuptual cell)
to attain his heart's desire.

Move only as she permits
 (Mate the bloated queen each season)
or be hung from the rafters.
How did he get here?


 5

Poor baby,
I heard your hammer.

The invention of pounding.

"As soon as it became important
that free energy be channeled."

Once you cared to be 
set off
from the surrounding medium.

This order has been preferred
since improvement was discovered.

The moment one intends to grow
at the expense.

When teeth emerge

Demand for special treatment
was an early symptom



THE DARK

Particular
 figment
 of flesh

Grasping.

Lone. Firm. Felt. There.
 Mindlessly?

"When you feel the urge, bear down!"

Great urge to rain



YOU FLOAT

You dazzle all eyes by increasing.

You wear a cross of gold, a bit of history,
regions, riot gear, polemics.

Every familiar piece
made of delectable candy.

You ear chocolate "lentils"
from France. Butterscotch barley.

You float above necessity, shooting.

 *

You restore order with 
a lead crystal gavel,

sleek periodicity.

You float on frosty-coloured hiring freeze,

see no major damage,
danger to Niagara Falls
or evidence of spreading.

You seek only
to impersonate Queen Victoria.

You float above the state of nature
in a miniature Japanese cart.

 *

You seek only to spangle
essentials
with rhinestones.

 *HYPNO-SEXISM*

 *AUTOPSY*
wink from theatre marquees.

You wear long strands
of sign language.

You float above refugees,

dazzle all eyes with searchlights



FICTION

When the woman's face contorted and she clutched the
railing for support, we knew she would die for this was
a film with the set trajectory of fiction.

 *

When she looked down at the birthmark on her leg, it
did not seem out of place like a blemish. Rather like a
landmark on a loved terrain. She had always answered
"no" with a touch of indignation when people asked if
she had burned herself. But when she saw her bare leg
in the mirror, the red splotch surprise her. From the
alien perspective it appeared extraneous.

 *

The measure of fear is the distance between an event and 
its mental representation. Small doses were sometimes
taken for pleasure. Distortion locked in the funhouse and
tickets sold.

 *

Her month old son would really watch her now, she 
hoped. After three days should seem 'strangely familiar'

 *

 The old architecture.

 Roof over
 the tongue

 *

Hands wandering netherworlds. A sense of self starts in
the mouth and spreads slowly.

 *

 pacifier. Lost again and
 crying because empty.

 "He's just a baby."
 "He's just hungry."
 "He's just scared."

 The poor vacuum!
 as best he can

 *

Her elderly father said the baby looked "like a wise little
old man."

 *

He predicted her child would be male. His motive was
obvious. He insisted this baby would look Irish as he
did - himself reborn in a form she must love. She hated
such transparency. "When have your hunches paid off
before?" she asked. She planned to give birth to a girl
who resembled her husband's family or, perhaps, no one
at all. An utterly new countenance. When a grandson 
was born who did resemble him, her erstwhile hostile
father grew doting. A superstitious streak she fought
against made it difficult not to accept the prophecy 
entirely now, with all its implications

 *

 Further the story.
 Furthering
 'the ends of the species'

 *

 Driving imitated sanity.
 Blurred gargoyles shrank into the past.
 Why should she notice or care?

 *

When her husband was late she imagined him dead. Now
that he had a son, she feared, he could be killed on the
highway.

 *

"Everything's a message," her friend said. And her son's
birth injury must be a sign, symbol of some weakness in
her thinking or her life.

 *

 crying because lost. The growing
 fibers of desire cannot
 locate...

 *

Fuss Balloon. Squirm Bag. The hero's nickname 
described unexpected animation.

 *

In the Bach fugue it was difficult to know which theme
was the traveler with whom one should identify. One's
self

 *

In his old age he went mad. Any stress, including the 
imminent operation, returned him to an incident that
occurred during WWII. The 'Japs' had torpedoed his ship
and it had almost sunk. Now, whenever he got agitated,
he would yet. "We're taking on water." This idea was
like a painted screen let down between himself and the
particulars of his danger.

 *

The French reserve a special past tense for fictions.

 *

She seemed to enjoy each new crisis as if it were a
complication in the plot of a comedy, a mere detour en route
to the happy resolution she was still expecting 'after this'
 old 'after this' dear 'after this'
 


RELIEF

"A song who's
taken over the story," she said.
 With relief?

 Compact
envoy from limbo - demanding
candy, toy trains. Manic
circuitry!

Do you always read escape
into mysteries?



DUSK

spider on the cold expanse
of glass, three stories high
rests intently 
and so purely alone.

I'm not like that!

Read the full text here: eclipsearchive.org

[Grace Ezra · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Poor baby, / I heard your hammer.” A micro-chapbook so perfectly timed, in every meaning.

[edmondegreen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perfect poetry

[Grace Watson · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Invention of Hunger is a great introduction to Rae Armantrout's poetry. It is short and slightly easier to manage conceptually because of this. Its structure is like that of most of her poems; short, terse verses that both limit and accentuate meaning.

The poems are sometimes difficult to fully understand, which is revealed in just the first lines: "Discomfort marks the boundary/One early symptom is the boundary." This raised questions for me immediately. Are readers made to feel uncomfortable when they don't grasp what's going on? Is there a boundary forming between the reader and the author here, or is she introducing it in an effort to break down this initial barrier between her thoughts and our own?

However esoteric or inaccessible the meaning within the poems may be, there are certain moments of clarity out from the moments of confusion. One critic admitted he craved more moments of Armantrout's lyricism, but went on to say that the desire for the poet to indulge the reader with more lyricism may be detrimental to the work, that the "austerity" of her usual language punctuated by beautiful images only creates a more powerful text.

The Invention of Hunger deals with themes of birth, life, and an invention of the self through language. The moments of unexpectedness and strangeness throw the reader to places where we least expect, and thus we are forced to draw our own conclusions instead of being handed what we think we're are usually supposed to take.

Having to step back and re-read is almost always the case for her poems. I see her poems to be abstract, and oftentimes reviewers describe them as concise and biting, "like eating a bowl of diamonds." Dazzling and painful.