A Conceit
Local anchors list the ways
viewers might enjoy tomorrow.
One says, “Get some great....”, but
that seems like a stretch.
The other snickers, meaning,
“Where were you going with that?”
Like you thought
*
Like you could defend
vanity
in the sense of
idle conceit,
vacuous self-
absorption,
doing whatever
it takes to
whatever
because,
really.
*
As if to say,
“Conceit
is the vacuum energy.”
Copyright © 2013 by Rae Armantrout. Used with permission of the author. This poem appeared in Poem-A-Day on October 30, 2013. Browse the Poem-A-Day archive.
"This poem brings together my ongoing obsessions with popular media and contemporary physics. It begins with the vacuous but relentless banter of a local news team, then centers on the two meanings of the word conceit: an inflated self-conception and (in literature) an exaggerated comparison. It ends with what might be an exaggerated comparison, 'Conceit/is the vacuum energy.' (The vacuum or 'dark' energy is the repulsive force in empty space thought to be driving the expansion of the universe, and here, metaphorically, the patter of these television personalities.)"
—Rae Armantrout
Rae Armantrout
Rae Armantrout was born in Vallejo, California, in 1947, and was part of the first generation of Language poets on the West Coast. She is the author of Partly: New and Selected Poems, 2001–2015 (Wesleyan University Press, 2016); Itself (Wesleyan University Press, 2015).