Description
Drama. Literary Nonfiction. Literary Criticism. READING THE UNSEEN: (OFFSTAGE) HAMLET is about the presence and significance of offstage action in Hamlet, things we hear about in words but do not see performed physically onstage—things like King Hamlet's murder "while [he] was sleeping in [his] orchard," Ophelia's death in "the glassy stream," Hamlet's visit to Ophelia's "closet ... with his doublet all unbraced," Gertrude and Claudius having sex "in the rank sweat of an enseamed bed." In a series of brilliantly original "close readings," Ratcliffe examines how it is that passages such as these make physically absent things verbally "present," how they "show" us things we do not actually see, how they bring us face to face with the "Words, words, words" that are what Hamlet is, he argues, most of all about.
Author Bio
Stephen Ratcliffe is the author of more than twenty books of poetry, including ROCKS (Cuneiform Press, 2020), MORE ROCKS (Cuneiform Press, 2020), SOUND OF WAVE IN CHANNEL (BlazeVOX Books, 2018), PAINTING (Chax Press, 2014), and SELECTED DAYS (Counterpath Press, 2012) which won The Poetry Center Book Award. He has also written three books of literary criticism, READING THE UNSEEN: (OFFSTAGE) HAMLET (Counterpath Press, 2010), LISTENING TO READING (SUNY Press, 2000), and Campion: On Song (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981). His ongoing series of six 1,000-page books, each written in 1,000 consecutive days, is available at Editions Eclipse and his daily poems-plus-photographs appear at Temporality. He has lived in Bolinas since 1973.
Author City: BOLINAS, CA USA