Rae Armantrout

Rae Armontrout is a very interesting poet, her poems leave the reader to interpret it how they see fit but then mislead the reader when you read deeper into her poems, having the reader question if their interpretation was incorrect, right, or neither. Armantrout’s poems was said to be simple by the eye, but when looked into and analyzed there’s a deeper meaning to what she is saying, her lyrical voice and her commitment was to the interior and the domestic.  “Soft Money” when I read into and interpreted it to what I saw fit was based on the interior motive, meaning it is about individuals who battle within themselves trying to figure who and what they are and fighting between who they are and who they ought or want to be. There’s no correct theme behind Rae’s poems and she states herself “you can hold the various elements of my poem in your mind at one time, but those elements may be hissing and spitting at one another”, which basically states you can have a set idea or theory of what her work is and what she is trying to write or say but then again you can have another thought that disagrees having a big dispute on which theory is right.  With that said when I first read this poem I thought it was about females, strippers, and prostitutes degrading themselves, but when I looked deeper into the poem I saw that it wasn’t what I once thought but was more significant and more realistic to the individuals having conflicting feelings within themselves.