That is a great quote.

Thanks! I just read the article, and I liked this crack from Johnsen: “It’s hard to examine their nervous systems, since their nerves are very, very small and the animals are more or less made of rock.”

That’s the gist of this article on LiveScience.

No argument about the talent. There are a lot of almost-great poems in the collection that are only spoiled by a few lines. But I think that authoritative voice is her own: she is a Professor of Poetry and Poetics, and it shows.

the logical conclusion of attempting to separate the mind from the body
Bingo.

That’s sea cucmbers — also echidnoderms. The cool thing is we’re much more closely related to these guys than we are to many things with clearly analogous body parts such as insects. Our two phylums, Chordata and Echidnodermata, are grouped together as Deuterostomes. The entire genome of the purple sea urchin has been sequenced, and there’s 70 percent overlap with the human genome.

James, you can find links to some of Armantrout’s poems on her website and on her page at Poets.org. I almost always avoid saying negative things about poets and poetry here, because I want to make people like poetry, not give them more reasons to dislike it — or worse, irritate a regular reader by slighting a favorite poet. But something about the combination of arid drawing-room ambience and in-group humor about writing kind of got under my skin.

I remember many years ago reading a science fiction story where people got some sort of ailment that caused them to adopt a characteristic of – I think – sea urchins, they spit their stomachs out when frightened.

I can’t wait to read the sea urchin poem when it’s ready.