Rae Armantrout is a highly respected American poet associated with language poetry. She won the Pulitzer prize in 2010 and is professor of poetry at the University of California, San Diego.
‘Spent’ is from Armantrout’s collection Just Saying, published by Wesleyan University Press in 2013. It can also be found in her latest collection, Partly: New and Selected Poems 2001–2015 (2016). In the poem, she plays with the different meanings of words. We make lists of things we want, but the poem reminds us that consuming too much is dangerous and leads to the exhaustion of resources — both financial and environmental.
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