Listening to Reading

Cultural Writing. Poetics.LISTENING TO READING presents two different kinds of writing about poetry - critical analysis and performance - both of which pay particular attention to sound, shape, and relation of sound/shape to meaning. It offers a critical and performative presentation of experimental writing, including essays on work by Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, David Bromige, Lyn Hejinian, Clark Coolidge, Beverly Dahlen, Susan Howe, Michael Palmer, Leslie Scalapino and others. [This] discussion of difficult, ostensibly inaccessible' poetries cries out for a wider audience, and could have a far-reaching impact on our general understanding of critical theory and practice - Joe Amato. Among Stephen Ratcliffe's many titles available from SPD are IDEA'S MIRROR, PRESENT TENSE and MALLARME: A POEM IN PROSE.

Stephen Ratcliffe is Associate Professor of English at Mills College.