Poetry. REAL, a long poem composed of 474 "frames" written in 474 consecutive days, continues the project Ratcliffe began in PORTRAITS & REPETITION (The Post-Apollo Press, 2002): to write down/"transcribe" perception of "real things" in the world as directly as possible, as they happen, before "conceptualization/ takes over." Attuned both to the presence and all-too-soon disappearance of "things" as such ("physicist noting/the pulse of light left the chamber before it even entered"), each 17-line page "frames and supports," as Juliana Spahr writes, "the poem's celebration of intimacy with both the natural and human world and its quiet, patient attentiveness to how luminous it all can be to those who just sit still and notice."

Author City: BOLINAS, CA USA

Stephen Ratcliffe's more than twenty books of poetry include NEW YORK NOTES (1983), DISTANCE (1986), [WHERE LATE THE SWEET] BIRDS SANG (1989), SOUND/(SYSTEM) (2002), PORTRAITS & REPETITION (2002), REAL (2007), CONVERSATION (2011), and CLOUD / RIDGE (2011). He is also the author of three books of literary criticism: Campion: On Song (1981), LISTENING TO READING (2000), and READING THE UNSEEN: (OFFSTAGE) HAMLET (2009). He lives in Bolinas, California, and teaches at Mills College in Oakland.

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