Poetry. Using the linguistic sculptor's tools of image, juxtaposition, repetition, fragment, melody, rhythm, and the word, Stephen Ratcliffe builds, unbuilds, and rebuilds a poetic world in SCULPTURE where the physical and the conceptual are resituated at various radii around a center of emotion on the verge of becoming itself. In its four evenly measured sections, the meanings of SCULPTURE accumulate like the verdigris of weather on sculptural work, leaving the work itself altered by the very matter of which it is made.

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.