Stephen Ratcliffe (born July 7, 1948 in

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the capital city, state capital and List of municipalities in Massachusetts, most populous city of the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financ ...

Massachusetts Massachusetts (Massachusett language, Massachusett: ''Muhsachuweesut assachusett writing systems, məhswatʃəwiːsət'' English: , ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is the most populous U.S. state, state in the New England ...

) is a contemporary U.S. poet and critic who has published a number of books of poetry and three books of criticism. He lives in Bolinas, CA and is the publisher of Avenue B Press. He was the director of the Creative Writing program at

Mills College Mills College at Northeastern University is a private college in Oakland, California and part of Northeastern University's global university system. Mills College was founded as the Young Ladies Seminary in 1852 in Benicia, California; it was r ...

Oakland, CA Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast of the United States, West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third ...

where he has been an instructor for more than 25 years, and continues to teach Creative Writing (poetry) and Literature (poetry,

Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's natio ...

) courses there."Bio Notes and Acknowledgements" in Young, Stephanie, editor. ''Bay Poetics'', Cambridge, MA: Faux Press, 2006; p 493 As of 2010, Ratcliffe has published at least 19 books of poetry (21 including the e-editions on Ubuweb) and as the editor and publisher of Avenue B Press.

Life and work

Ratcliffe moved to the

San Francisco Bay San Francisco Bay is a large tidal estuary in the United States, U.S. state of California, and gives its name to the San Francisco Bay Area. It is dominated by the big cities of San Francisco, San Jose, California, San Jose, and Oakland, Ca ...

area when he was 4 and has lived in Bolinas, CA since 1973. Ratcliffe attended

Reed College Reed College is a private university, private liberal arts college in Portland, Oregon. Founded in 1908, Reed is a residential college with a campus in the Eastmoreland, Portland, Oregon, Eastmoreland neighborhood, with Tudor style architecture ...

for one and a half years before transferring to the

University of California at Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant uni ...

to finish his bachelor's degree and complete his PhD. He was also a

Stegner Fellow The Stegner Fellowship program is a two-year creative writing fellowship at Stanford University. The award is named after American Wallace Stegner (1909–1993), a historian, novelist, short story writer, environmentalist, and Stanford facult ...

Stanford Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

in 1974-75. The focus of Ratcliffe's early academic career was on

Renaissance poetry Renaissance literature refers to European literature which was influenced by the intellectual and cultural tendencies associated with the Renaissance. The literature of the Renaissance was written within the general movement of the Renaissance, ...

.Stephen Ratcliffe / Jeffrey Schrader: ''Interview'' 7.19.08. ''Note'': this interview is appearing in Jacket2, a remodeled version of

Jacket (magazine) ''Jacket'' (now published as ''Jacket2'') is an online literary periodical, which was founded by the Australian poet John Tranter. The first issue was in October 1997. Until 2010, each new number of the magazine was posted at the Web site pie ...

, an on-line literary periodical Ratcliffe has pointed to his work on

Thomas Campion Thomas Campion (sometimes spelled Campian; 12 February 1567 – 1 March 1620) was an English composer, poet, and physician. He was born in London, educated at Cambridge, studied law in Gray's inn. He wrote over a hundred lute songs, masques f ...

during this time period as a defining event in his artistic development and poetic practice up to this point. By the early 1980s, Ratcliffe had begun to read and ‘learn’ about, and from, the

Language poets The Language poets (or ''L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E'' poets, after the magazine of that name) are an avant-garde group or tendency in United States poetry that emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The poets included: Bernadette Mayer, Leslie Scal ...

after his friend

Bill Berkson William Craig Berkson (August 30, 1939 – June 16, 2016) was an American poet, critic, and teacher who was active in the art and literary worlds from his early twenties on. Early life and education Born in New York City on August 30, 1939, Bil ...

, a fellow poet from Bolinas, gave Ratcliffe his set of original L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E magazines. Ratcliff draws much of his inspiration from where he lives in Bolinas, California.

Poetics and recent work

Ratcliffe recognizes that his own particular commitment to writing has, over the years, displayed itself as something which works " serially": Ratcliffe's writing from the past decade, beginning with 2000's ''Listening to Reading'' and stretching towards his most recent, ongoing ''Temporality'' project, becomes the insistent 'capture' of what, following on Merleau-Ponty, it could mean for us to be "meeting time on the way to subjectivity". From this perspective, Ratcliffe's work not only addresses (tacitly) the concept of the "

postmodern Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or mode of discourseNuyen, A.T., 1992. The Role of Rhetorical Devices in Postmodernist Discourse. Philosophy & Rhetoric, pp.183–194. characterized by skepticism toward the " grand narratives" of modern ...

" 'crisis of the subject', but continues to invest itself, with increasing compactness and stability, in themes and obsessions he has delineated throughout his career, vocation, and a life devoted to "making" or

poiesis In philosophy and semiotics, ''poiesis'' (from grc, ποίησις) is "the activity in which a person brings something into being that did not exist before." ''Poiesis'' is etymologically derived from the ancient Greek term ποιεῖν, wh ...

. Such an intense avowal implicates Ratcliffe's project within a timeline moving forward from the ''Renaissance poets'' to

Stéphane Mallarmé Stéphane Mallarmé ( , ; 18 March 1842 – 9 September 1898), pen name of Étienne Mallarmé, was a French poet and critic. He was a major French symbolist poet, and his work anticipated and inspired several revolutionary artistic schools of t ...

and

Henry James Henry James ( – ) was an American-British author. He is regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism, and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language. He was th ...

, or moving backward in time from

Leslie Scalapino Leslie Scalapino (July 25, 1944 – May 28, 2010) was an American poet, experimental prose writer, playwright, essayist, and editor, sometimes grouped in with the Language poets, though she felt closely tied to the Beat poets. Writes Hejinian ...

to the ''Language poets'' and

Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946) was an American novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the Allegheny West (Pittsburgh), Allegheny West neighborhood and raised in Oakland, Calif ...

. Along the way, in either direction, Ratcliffe may take instruction from practices as widely divergent as the radicalized "quietude" of

Yvor Winters Arthur Yvor Winters (October 17, 1900 – January 25, 1968) was an American poet and literary critic. Life Winters was born in Chicago, Illinois and lived there until 1919 except for brief stays in Seattle and in Pasadena, where his grandparen ...

, or the

aleatoric music Aleatoric music (also aleatory music or chance music; from the Latin word ''alea'', meaning "dice") is music in which some element of the composition is left to chance, and/or some primary element of a composed work's realization is left to the ...

and chance procedures of John Cage. (''see also'':

Aleatoricism Aleatoricism or aleatorism, the noun associated with the adjectival aleatory and aleatoric, is a term popularised by the musical composer Pierre Boulez, but also Witold Lutosławski and Franco Evangelisti, for compositions resulting from "action ...

) Ratcliffe never strayed far from the themes of "music" and "being in number" discovered in his initial "Campion project". He has not abandoned the touchstone that is Mallarmé, whose work he appropriated mid-career, culminating with 1998's ''Mallarmé: Poem in Prose''. Ratcliffe's discussions of his writing processes, both in his interviews and essays, continue to acknowledge, along with Mallarmé, that:

Selected bibliography

;Criticism * ''Campion: On Song'' (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981) * ''Listening to Reading'' (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2000) * ''Reading the Unseen: (Offstage) Hamlet'' (Denver, CO: Counterpath Press, 2010) ;Poetry * ''New York Notes'' (Tombouctou Books, 1983) * ''Distance'' (Bolinas, CA: Avenue B, 1986) * ''Mobile/Mobile'' (Los Angeles, CA: Echo Park Press, 1987) * ''

here late the sweet Here is an adverb that means "in, on, or at this place". It may also refer to: Software * Here Technologies, a mapping company * Here WeGo (formerly Here Maps), a mobile app and map website by Here Television * Here TV (formerly "here!"), a TV ...

BIRDS SANG'' (Oakland, CA: O Books, 1989) * ''Sonnets'' (Elmwood, CT: Potes & Poets Press, 1989) * ''Talking in Tranquility: Interviews with

Ted Berrigan Ted Berrigan (November 15, 1934 – July 4, 1983) was an American poet. Early life Berrigan was born in Providence, Rhode Island, on November 15, 1934. After high school, he spent a year at Providence College before joining the U.S. Army. After t ...

'' (edited by Ratcliffe &

). (Bolinas/Oakland, CA: Avenue B / O Books, 1991) * ''spaces in the light said to be where one/ comes from'' (Elmwood, CT: Potes & Poets Press, 1992) * ''Sculpture'' (Littoral Books, 1996) * ''Mallarmé: Poem in Prose'' (Santa Barbara, CA: Santa Barbara Review Publications, 1998) * ''Idea's Mirror'' (Elmwood, CT: Potes & Poets, 1999) * ''Conversation'' (Plein Air Editions) – forthcoming ;Triptych/Trilogy note: the following works are on-going projects designated by Ratcliffe as trilogy / triptych(s). The dates in

rackets Racket may refer to: * Racket (crime), a systematised element of organized crime ** Protection racket, a scheme whereby a group provides protection to businesses or other groups through violence outside the sanction of the law * Racket (sports equ ...

indicate the time period during which the work was written. For example, .9.98. - 5.28.99.indicates February 9, 1998 - May 28, 1999. *Triptych/Trilogy ~ each book is 474 pages/days : **''Portraits & Repetition'' (The Post-Apollo Press, 2002) .9.98 – 5.28.99.**''REAL'' (Avenue B, 2007) .17.00 – 7.1.01ref>commenting on REAL, Ratcliffe compares and contrasts this work with

Dorothy Wordsworth Dorothy Mae Ann Wordsworth (25 December 1771 – 25 January 1855) was an English author, poet, and diarist. She was the sister of the Romantic poet William Wordsworth, and the two were close all their adult lives. Dorothy Wordsworth had no am ...

’s journal writing in her own “real time”, a kind of practice similar and different from Ratcliffe’s own (D. Wordsworth’s journal was subsequently published as Grasmere Journals). Says Ratcliffe on Wordsworth’s practice: "writing that transcribes actual things/actions/events in the world as they were, or seemed to be in that present moment of seeing/noting them. The writing in REAL tries to do something of this 'translation' of world into words, not as Dorothy Wordsworth did (whatever she did!) because I'm trying to give a 'shape' to things (the lines) on the page (among other things), but I'm interested to think of her work at this point, having written REAL." ** ''CLOUD / RIDGE'' (Ubu editions, 2007) .2.01. – 10.18.02 – #25 in the “Publishing the Unpublishable” series available complete and on-lin
here
/small> *Triptych/Trilogy ~ each book is 1,000 pages/days: **''HUMAN / NATURE'' (Ubu editions, 2007) 0.19.02. – 7.14.05. – #26 in the “Publishing the Unpublishable” series available complete and on-lin
here
/small> **''Remarks on Color / Sound'' (Eclipse, 2010) .15.05. – 4.9.08. – available complete and on-lin
here
/small> **''Temporality'' .10.08. – 1.4.11– an ongoing project appearing daily here as a blog text
Temporality
presumably up through its 1,000th day. "Temporality" is continuing on Ratcliffe's blog past that day .4.11(January 4, 2011). Perhaps a new triptych has been started.

Notes and references

External links

Publisher’s Ratcliffe Page
from the publisher of Ratcliffe's most recent book of criticism: ‘’Reading the Unseen: (Offstage) Hamlet’’
Audio performances by Ratcliffe
includes a reading of HUMAN/NATURE
poems from Temporality
The complete text of Ratcliffe’s book, composed from July 2, 2001 through October 18, 2002. Part of Ubuweb’s series ‘’Publishing the Unpublishable’’ – 025: ubu editions www.ubu.com

The complete text of Ratcliffe’s book, composed from October 19, 2002 through July 14, 2005. Part of Ubuweb’s series ‘’Publishing the Unpublishable’’ – 026: ubu editions www.ubu.com
Ratcliffe Author Page @durationpress.com
this page has a link to a selection of poems from his 2002 collection ‘’Portraits & Repetitions’’
Ratcliffe Homepage @ EPC – Electronic Poetry Center
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ratcliffe, Stephen 1948 births English-language poets American book publishers (people) American male poets Living people Mills College faculty Poets from California Stegner Fellows American editors