Next Life (Wesleyan Poetry Series) - Contemporary Poetry Collection for Literature Lovers & Book Clubs" （注：由于原标题是书名而非商品标题，我进行了适当扩展，添加了诗集类型说明和目标读者群体，使其更符合电商SEO规范。如果是实际商品，可能需要更多产品特征关键词）

In the poems of NEXT LIFE, the natural world is taking a beating, not only from the rival attractions of the cinema and TV, but from the haste with which we have catapulted earth's slide into eco-catastrophe. From the very first poem, "Tease," to the last, we see the natural order made to feel second-rate, flowers turn into wallflowers. In "Tease," bare trees must be supplemented by their imagined resemblance to human skeletons to earn a place in the "provisional parts" of the world, while the poem works up a keen interest in a serial killer rapist movie--the eternal pair of cop versus serial killer. By the second poem, "Line," the speaker can no longer recall the origins of the term "rooting around."Armantrout asserts that "Narrative prepares me/ to see/ whatever I see next," for one is always anticipating oneself, like the fellow Nicolas Cage plays in the new film NEXT--he can see everything two minutes into the future, thus it's hard to surprise him. In his case precognition itself foregrounds narrative's numinousness, to "produce a continuous present," as the poet reminds us in "As (2)." Three birds show up to stage a "framing gesture,/ / an inclusive sweep."I have admired her writing for nearly 25 years, and last week I went to see her read from some of the poems in NEXT LIFE as she spoke on a bookstore panel here in San Francisco on "The Future of Poetry." It was the perfect topic for the theorist of NEXT LIFE, in which poetry's next two minutes seem always only as far away as the reach of one's hand. And she has a beautiful speaking voice too, her vowels pleasantly striated. If only I could have that voice of the operator eliminated from my phone system and have Rae Armantrout tell me that when I hear the tone, the time will be 10:49 a.m. and fifty seconds.In the meantime her new book gives us flashes of another world, the chazzerai of this one, and I find it telling that so much of it comes from an attempted rehabilitation of the flora and fauna that, dried and etiolated, we are losing every day. "Dry, white frazzle/ in a blue vase" (cf Marlon Brando in A DRY WHITE SEASON) "beautiful--/ / a frozen swarm/ of incommensurate wishes." ["Close."]