Rae Armantrout is a poet with a supreme command over the English language, and she shies away from no topic. She is a member of the original “L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets” and knows what she is doing. She is, quite simply, a poet who knows how to get the most out of the words that she uses to write her poems.

“Money Shot,” her latest collection of poems, investigates many varied and distinct topics: sex, love, money, revenge, science. There is no limit to her range, and these poems are truly something to be reckoned with. A slim book, with slim lines, “Money Shot” challenges the reader to carefully dissect each word and definition in order to uncover the varied meaning of the poems within.

While a quick read, the poetry in this book beckons to be read multiple times. There is no possibility of understanding any poem in this book fully without reading them over and over again, and this goes towards proving the book’s strength. This is a book whose strength comes from the varied interpretations of the poetry, from the “strong economy” of the lines, and from the author’s inability to settle for the easy descriptions and metaphors.

Pick it up. Read it. Then read it again. You’ll like it.

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The other day, my professor said that “within the English Department, Literary Analysis is the Husband, Reading is the Wife, and Creative Writing is the Mistress.” I have to admit, of all the things he lectured about this semester, this candid moment is what sticks out. Creative Writing as the mistress? Not only is that a great thing to think about as I tried to pass the time in class, it also got me thinking about how Creative Writing is treated as an academic focus in the world of Higher Education. In English classes that are not distinctly labeled “Creative Writing” one will seldom find creative options for essays, tests, or projects. So many of the assignments and lectures are geared at studying writing as an observation rather than experiencing it as a writer. Instead of trying to write in the style of Hemingway, create a sonnet that’s worth reading, or understand iambic pentameter by writing examples of it, we look at literature that has already been produced and are told that it is ‘good writing.’

Creative writing can be, and is, incredibly useful in the English classroom. It gives students the outlet necessary for forming and establishing their written voice, while also maintaining a student’s interest. I think that it is easy for a teacher to push creative writing to the outskirts of the curriculum, to make it an elective, or only for extra credit. I think it is safe to do so. It keeps the administration at bay and makes date-entry and growth-tracking easy. But I also I think this is an incredible disservice to students because it not only limits what they are exposed to in the classroom, it also prohibits students from learning how to craft their thoughts and opinions in an engaging, interesting, and significant way.

Maybe its time to give the mistress a little more credit.

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Shakespeare’s sonnets were dedicated to persons whose beauty he wanted to preserve forever. They were dedicated to the preservation of life itself. By writing the sonnets, Shakespeare (as he claims within several of the sonnets) has defeated the destructive nature of time and decay. But has he really done so?

As soon as something is created, it begins to die. The moment we are born, the countdown to our first birthday begins. Living, essentially, is dying. Can the same logic be applied to the sonnets, or to any work at all for that matter? Don’t they exist within the same realm of time as we do? I wouldn’t doubt that works of art have longer life spans than their creators; if they didn’t we’d have no knowledge of Monet, DaVinci, Plath, or Hemingway. Their works survive to this day, but it is only because people have ensured their survival.

If all the people in the world were to fall dead right now, the pages would still be there, resting in the still hands of a reader, but would the work’s life then been sentenced to die slowly now that there is no one to care for it, or even more dismal, has the work died with people, now that there is no one to read it? It is ironic that Shakespeare intention for writing the sonnets was to defeat human mortality, when human mortality is what the sonnets, or any work, rely on to survive.

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Yesterday, my professor asked my class, “What is Asian American literature?” as an exam question. My response, though half-assed it may seem, was “It’s exactly what any other kind of literature is, but with Asians.” At first this response seems contrived and a little dismissive, but as I thought more about it, I felt more and more that I was right.

Asian American literature does exactly what Latin American Literature, Black American literature, Queer literature or any other kind of literature does: help the reader understand the point of view offered by the author and then in effect, understand the point of view from someone of a different culture, or group.

Ultimately, I think ethnic and queer literature attempt to reach the same ideal of expanding a reader’s experience to hopefully, by some chance, find common ground with someone unlike him or herself.

The novels I read in my Asian American lit. class dealt with the struggles of foreigners coming to America to make a life, and the prejudices held by others toward their culture, whether harm was intended or not. I expect I would be able to say the same thing about the novels I would read in a Latin American lit. class or Black American lit. class.

Of course each genre is different in that the minorities from which they come from address different challenges but essentially, they’re all trying to do the same thing, which is end prejudice and get people talking about racism, xenophobia, sexism, and homophobia so that they can better understand it and eliminate it.

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