Description
Fiction. THE ABSENT'S themes are one and many, connecting as they are layered: early photography, 19th century Philadelphia, the resonant voices of women, the fusion of landscape and man, westward expansion, grief and mourning, memento mori. Rosalind Palermo Stevenson's poetic prose narrative is a meditation that travels between east and west and interior and exterior; a meditation driven by the narrator's desire to render, with his mind and with his camera, what is absent present.
"What is perhaps most extraordinary of THE ABSENT'S many achievements is its egalitarian voice. Its singular lyricism evokes a hallucinatory vision in which every element of the interior self finds an exterior and crystalline lucidity. The texture and contours of consciousness, what we recognize as the images of our obsessions, quotidian objects replete with their psychic claims, ambient light and dust—Palermo Stevenson is attentive to the urgency of each. Every sentence offers evidence of the intricacies of our personal fugue."—Lloyd Lynford
"An astonishing combination of dreaminess and precision."—Mary Gordon
Author Bio
Rosalind Palermo Stevenson is the author of THE ABSENT (Rain Mountain Press, 2016), KAFKA AT RUDOLPH STEINER'S (2014, Rain Mountain Press) and INSECT DREAMS (2007, Rain Mountain Press). INSECT DREAMS has also been published in the anthologies: Poe's Children (Random House/Doubleday, edited by Peter Straub); and Trampoline (Small Beer Press, edited by Kelly Link). Her story "The Guest" has been included in Wild Dreams: The Best of Italian Americana (Fordham University Press), and her short fiction and prose poems appear in literary journals including: Web Conjunctions, Skidrow Penthouse, Drunken Boat, First Intensity, Spinning Jenny, Works (of fiction) In Progress (WIPs), Quick Fiction, White Crow, Literal Latte, River City, and Washington Square. Her work has received several Pushcart nominations. Rosalind lives in New York City.
Author City: NEW YORK, NY USA