Poet James Armstrong’s new book “Empire” is a passionate, deeply political, but also deeply lyrical poetry collection. “Empire” registers the ways in which the political becomes the personal as war after American war leaves its mark on us all, from childhood through maturity. Armstrong connects his youthful memories of the thudding of helicopters in Vietnamese rice paddies to the blaring of Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkeries” that accompanied the assault on Faluja; in his elegy for victims of the Twin Towers he connects Jefferson’s use of the word “savages” in the Declaration of Independence to the irony of America’s firing “Tomahawk” cruise missiles in Afghanistan. In the arc of “Empire” no-one is innocent, and yet most of us would prefer “the flag of the country called ‘everyday,’/whose standard is the tea towel with crossed spoons./Or the nation called ‘satisfying labor,’/whose coat of arms is the entrance to the subway.” Fast forward to the present, when a congressman tweets a Christmas card of his family holding machine guns, and the former President, “totally valid, totally exonerated, . . . beautifully, savagely quiffed,” roils his followers into violence until he is“at last/evicted,” but , like Ahab, “nails his country to the mast.”

Armstrong’s work has received advance praise from his fellow poets: Wisconsin Poet Laureate Kimberly Blaeser points out that “Empire” “lays bare truths of our oldest plagues—human greed and settler colonialism. In an America where ‘television is our forever’ and ‘this night is as dark as it is going to get,’ ‘sorrow is a door that keeps opening.’” Still, she says, there are “poems of beauty and brash love for the planet’s smallest gifts.” She cites deft examples of Armstrong’s phrasing: “the moon a half-spent coin,” “sun gauzy in a chemise of fine particles,” “wet vowels of the sea.”. Albert Goldbarth, two-time winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and author of nearly 40 books, agrees that Armstrong’s poems demonstrate the ability to be “photographically exact and wildly imaginative at once,” and praises his “ability to compact large-scale ideas” in deft phrases, adding “These are tomorrow’s adages in the making.” Michael Kleber-Diggs, author of “Worldly Things” and winner of Milkweed’s Max Ritvo Poetry Prize, writes that “’Empire’ is expertly crafted by a skilled and brilliant hand. James Armstrong sees the current and historical landscape fully and well, the natural climate and the national one.” Melissa Range, 2015 National Poetry Series winner, also points out Armstrong’s formal abilities: “‘Empire’ is a marvel of precision and craft from start to finish. Armstrong intuitively understands the argumentative energies of the sonnet form, and it is here, in a series of dazzling sonnets both rhymed and unrhymed, that his critiques are most pointed and most powerful.”

James Armstrong is the author of two previous collections, “Monument in a Summer Hat” (New Issues Press) and “Blue Lash” (Milkweed Editions). He lives in Winona, MN, where he taught poetry at Winona State University for 24 years and was the town’s first Poet Laureate.

Praise For “Empire”

“Empire” is expertly crafted by a skilled and brilliant hand. James Armstrong sees the current and historical landscape fully and well, the natural climate and the national one. “Empire” sings in art and truth. It celebrates and mourns in ways both beautiful and sublime.
—Michael Kleber-Diggs, author “Worldly Things,” winner of the Max Ritvo Poetry Prize

James Armstrong’s new collection “Empire” is a lacerating interrogation of a nation obsessed with violence, cruelty, and war. “America,” Armstrong writes, “most of what you have done is a long con.” “America,” he continues, “you need to live up to the dumb name / you got when you were badly drawn, and mostly made up.” In poem after tightly crafted poem, Armstrong holds America (as a country, as a group of people, and as an idea) accountable to its failures, whether those failures have to do with racism, tyranny, capitalism, guns, poverty, or the pandemic. “Empire” is a marvel of precision and craft from start to finish. Armstrong intuitively understands the argumentative energies of the sonnet form, and it is here, in a series of dazzling sonnets both rhymed and unrhymed, that his critiques are most pointed and most powerful. The prophetic voice in this book singes and soars, yet also ultimately leaves room for hope. Those of us who have been eagerly awaiting a new book from Armstrong will agree that this book was worth the wait.
—Melissa Range, author of “Scriptorium,” winner of the 2015 National Poetry Series

It’s a special talent to be both photographically exact and wildly imaginative at once, and surely James Armstrong possesses that talent (witness the crow shaking its wings “with obsidian insolence,” or the gar fish, a “syringe in chainmail). But Armstrong is far more than Mr. Imagery. His ability to compact large-scale ideas is admirably deft (“snow, like shame falls on everyone” or “history paints/with a mythic eye”—these are tomorrow’s adages in the making). Armstrong’s knack for seizing le mot juste is equally impressive (as with the downed powerlines and tree limbs in “the affronted road”), and his occasional humor is on target (to the Washington of the famous “crossing the Delaware” painting: “Dear General, /’Never stand up in a boat’ is good advice/I learned at scout camp”), even as his poems on 9/11 are moving elegies. But most particularly, in this tellingly-titled “Empire”, Armstrong’s heart is a furious engine in what might call his political poems, which are trenchant and angry and grievous, which are jeremiads about how his country has horribly disappointed him—the flip side of which, of course, is a saddened love for that country’s promise.
—Albert Goldbarth, author of more than 40 books, most recently “Other Worlds,” and two-time winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award

Few poets writing today have the moral power and artistic subtlety of James Armstrong. The poems in “Empire” are by turns personal, public, and political. They wrestle with the tragic and criminal difficulties of our times, war after war, politics, the pandemic, the attack on 9-11, But Armstrong’s voice is always one of great moral passion, recalling the beauty and grandeur of Ecclesiastes. The poems are crafted with the precision of verbal dovetails, and the result is one brilliant poem after another. “Empire” is a book that one doesn’t just read, but takes part in, and it illuminates the soul’s quest by snow-light, where “a half-moon rides through clouds/ that blow like the smoke of battle.” This is a brilliant, indispensable collection.
—Connie Wanek, Author of “Rival Gardens: New and Selected Poems” and “Consider the Lilies: Mrs. God Poems.”

Filled with poems of beauty and brash love for the planet’s smallest gifts, “Empire” also lays bare truths of our oldest plagues—human greed and settler colonialism. In an America where “television is our forever” and “this night is as dark as it is going to get,” “sorrow is a door that keeps opening.” But in these poems James Armstrong yearns with us for more. Alongside witty critique, he weaves a thread of hope. “If the world is not a copy. . . the price of things gets dearer.” There are wonders—“the moon a half-spent coin,” “sun gauzy in a chemise of fine particles,” “wet vowels of the sea”—yet each priceless moment wavers on the rim of loss. With unblinking candor, the author positions us in that true precariousness; then quietly offers: “Let a poet transmit your dream.” That, finally, is the work done by Armstrong’s Empire”.
—Kimberly Blaeser, author of Copper Yearning and Wisconsin Poet Laureate 2015-16

Empire by James Armstrong