Stephen Ratcliffe
Encyclopedia
Stephen Ratcliffe is a contemporary U.S. poet and critic who has published numerous books of poetry and three books of criticism. He lives in Bolinas, CA and is the publisher of Avenue B Press. Formerly the director of the Creative Writing program at Mills College
in Oakland, CA where he has been an instructor for more than 25 years, Ratcliffe continues to teach Creative Writing (poetry) and Literature (poetry, Shakespeare) courses there.
Not explicitly attached to any specific poetry “movement” or “school”, Ratcliffe has “collected influences from all (or many) different poetries". The focus of much of Ratcliffe’s recent work from the past decade is on the "long poem
/ book" written in consecutive days, ‘rooted’/ ‘grounded’ in the place where he lives and does his work: Bolinas.
Ratcliffe’s creative output is prodigious and much of it (especially his more recent work) remains unpublished in traditional formats. However, with the increased viability of blogs and digital publishing sites, Ratcliffe's work has morphed along with a shifting audience into the "age of the internet": by the end of the first decade of this new century, he will have published three major book projects in digital formats.
Ratcliffe acknowledges this shift and its effect as problematic, both for his writing and on the reader's consciousness. Stating what seems at first thought obvious or self-evident turns out to have lasting implications on the fate of poetry in an uncertain future. It raises profound questions for the particular epitemological situation which is that of being a "reader", a unique situation that Ratcliffe refers to as (and names) "listening to reading".
During a career spanning four decades, Ratcliffe has developed a singular writing practice, one in which he insistently and tirelessly makes any particular or given source text/influence his own through a rigorous commitment to documentation, observation, recording, routine, appropriation
and constraint
.
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, Ratcliffe has published 14 books.
area when he was 4 and has lived in Bolinas, CA since 1973 where he has, over the years, developed associations among a circuit of artists, writers, and poets living and working there and in the surrounding area.
By the time Ratcliffe arrived in Bolinas during the early 1970s, he was already moving on in the graduate program at University of California at Berkeley and would soon be commuting to Stanford
as a Stegner Fellow
in ‘74-’75. During this time-span from the late 1960’s to the completion of his doctoral dissertation in 1978 (what has been referred to as his “Campion project”), Ratcliffe had married and become a father.
The focus of Ratcliffe’s early academic career was on Renaissance poetry so that by all appearances he was becoming a scholar of the classics and the canon. However, Ratcliffe has pointed to his work on Thomas Campion
during this time period as a defining (if not the defining) event in his artistic development and poetic practice up to this point:
Formally, with the completion of Ratcliffe's work on his dissertation, the ground was cleared for a new phase in his career and with it a renewed focus on his own writing. By the early 1980s, Ratcliffe had begun to read and ‘learn’ about (and from) the so-called Language poets
after his friend Bill Berkson
, a fellow poet from Bolinas, gave Ratcliffe his set of original L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E
magazines. As Ratcliffe later observed:
Bolinas
As was hinted at above, the importance of Bolinas, CA to Ratcliffe’s endeavors cannot be underestimated. The intersection of Bolinas with its artists, friends, and compatriots is notable, even for those unfamiliar with the various poetry movements, currents, and schools. Fast mapping
the influence of this particular community onto the entire landscape of recent U. S. poetry is not entirely presumptuous, for as poet Alice Notley
, discussing 'space' in the work of Joanne Kyger
, points out:
In a brief introductory note to a selection of interviews, Robert Creeley
remembers, with fondness and appreciation, what Bolinas meant to his vocation:
poets, music
, and temporality
she may well have invoked the trajectory
of Ratcliffe's own poetic practice spanning nearly four decades now:
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 (and 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 (hardly the only one one available), Ratcliffe's work not only addresses (tacitly) the now familiar concept of the "postmodern" '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
. It is an investment where Ratcliffe can actually perform
Such an intense avowal implicates Ratcliffe's project within a timeline moving forward from the Renaissance poets to Mallarmé
and Henry James
, or moving backward in time from Leslie Scalapino
to the Language poets and Gertrude Stein
. Along the way, in either direction, Ratcliffe may take instruction from practices as widely divergent as the radicalized "quietude" of Yvor Winters
, or the aleatoric music
and chance procedures of John Cage
. (see also: Aleatoricism)
Thinking back over this trajectory we can note that amidst this creative flux, Ratcliffe never strayed far from the themes of "music" and "being in number" discovered, perhaps, in his initial "Campion project", and nor has he 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:
Poetry
Triptych/Trilogy
note: the following works are on-going projects designated by Ratcliffe as trilogy / tryptych(s). The dates in [brackets] indicate the time period during which the work was written. For example [2.9.98. - 5.28.99.] indicates February 9, 1998 - May 28, 1999
Mills College
Mills College is an independent liberal arts women's college founded in 1852 that offers bachelor's degrees to women and graduate degrees and certificates to women and men. Located in Oakland, California, Mills was the first women's college west of the Rockies. The institution was initially founded...
in Oakland, CA where he has been an instructor for more than 25 years, Ratcliffe continues to teach Creative Writing (poetry) and Literature (poetry, Shakespeare) courses there.
Not explicitly attached to any specific poetry “movement” or “school”, Ratcliffe has “collected influences from all (or many) different poetries". The focus of much of Ratcliffe’s recent work from the past decade is on the "long poem
Long poem
The long poem is a literary genre including all poetry of considerable length. Though the definition of a long poem is vague and broad, the genre includes some of the most important poetry ever written....
/ book" written in consecutive days, ‘rooted’/ ‘grounded’ in the place where he lives and does his work: Bolinas.
Ratcliffe’s creative output is prodigious and much of it (especially his more recent work) remains unpublished in traditional formats. However, with the increased viability of blogs and digital publishing sites, Ratcliffe's work has morphed along with a shifting audience into the "age of the internet": by the end of the first decade of this new century, he will have published three major book projects in digital formats.
Ratcliffe acknowledges this shift and its effect as problematic, both for his writing and on the reader's consciousness. Stating what seems at first thought obvious or self-evident turns out to have lasting implications on the fate of poetry in an uncertain future. It raises profound questions for the particular epitemological situation which is that of being a "reader", a unique situation that Ratcliffe refers to as (and names) "listening to reading".
During a career spanning four decades, Ratcliffe has developed a singular writing practice, one in which he insistently and tirelessly makes any particular or given source text/influence his own through a rigorous commitment to documentation, observation, recording, routine, appropriation
Appropriation (art)
Appropriation is a fundamental aspect in the history of the arts . Appropriation can be understood as "the use of borrowed elements in the creation of a new work."...
and constraint
Constrained writing
Constrained writing is a literary technique in which the writer is bound by some condition that forbids certain things or imposes a pattern.Constraints are very common in poetry, which often requires the writer to use a particular verse form....
.
But more than that, it’s a way of being in the moment, making writing part of that moment, word and event becoming synchronous, writing as ‘contemplative practice,’ as Norman Fischer has put it, which I like, and like to think of, as a way that might describe what I’m doing in my work. . . . |
| Stephen Ratcliffe in 2009 |
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, Ratcliffe has published 14 books.
Life and work
Ratcliffe moved to the San Francisco BaySan Francisco Bay
San Francisco Bay is a shallow, productive estuary through which water draining from approximately forty percent of California, flowing in the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers from the Sierra Nevada mountains, enters the Pacific Ocean...
area when he was 4 and has lived in Bolinas, CA since 1973 where he has, over the years, developed associations among a circuit of artists, writers, and poets living and working there and in the surrounding area.
Stephen Ratcliffe's "Two Hejinian Talks" are a model of careful reading that gives play to the multiple associations allowed for by such shifting frames of reference. We don't usually read this way, but his analysis accounts for the sense of richness we have in reading Lyn Hejinian Lyn Hejinian Lyn Hejinian is an American poet, essayist, translator and publisher. She is often associated with the Language poets and is well known for her landmark work My Life , as well as her book of essays, The Language of Inquiry .-Life:Hejinian was born in the San... , even if we do not follow all the suggestions |
| Rosmarie Waldrop Rosmarie Waldrop Rosmarie Waldrop is a contemporary American poet, translator and publisher. Born in Germany, she has lived in the United States since 1958. She has lived in Providence, Rhode Island since the late 1960s... |
By the time Ratcliffe arrived in Bolinas during the early 1970s, he was already moving on in the graduate program at University of California at Berkeley and would soon be commuting to Stanford
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
as a Stegner Fellow
Stegner Fellowship
The Stegner Fellowship program is a two-year creative writing fellowship at Stanford University. The award is named after American Wallace Stegner , an historian, novelist, short story writer, environmentalist, and Stanford faculty member who founded the university's creative writing program. Ten...
in ‘74-’75. During this time-span from the late 1960’s to the completion of his doctoral dissertation in 1978 (what has been referred to as his “Campion project”), Ratcliffe had married and become a father.
The focus of Ratcliffe’s early academic career was on Renaissance poetry so that by all appearances he was becoming a scholar of the classics and the canon. However, Ratcliffe has pointed to his work on Thomas Campion
Thomas Campion
Thomas Campion was an English composer, poet and physician. He wrote over a hundred lute songs; masques for dancing, and an authoritative technical treatise on music.-Life:...
during this time period as a defining (if not the defining) event in his artistic development and poetic practice up to this point:
Formally, with the completion of Ratcliffe's work on his dissertation, the ground was cleared for a new phase in his career and with it a renewed focus on his own writing. By the early 1980s, Ratcliffe had begun to read and ‘learn’ about (and from) the so-called Language poets
Language poets
The Language poets are an avant garde group or tendency in United States poetry that emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s...
after his friend Bill Berkson
Bill Berkson
Bill Berkson is an American poet, critic, teacher and sometime curator, who has been active in the art and literary worlds since his early twenties.-Life:Born in New York on August 30, 1939, Bill Berkson grew up on Manhattan’s Upper...
, a fellow poet from Bolinas, gave Ratcliffe his set of original L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E
L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E (magazine)
L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E was an avant garde poetry magazine edited by Charles Bernstein and Bruce Andrews that ran thirteen issues from 1978 to 1981...
magazines. As Ratcliffe later observed:
Bolinas
As was hinted at above, the importance of Bolinas, CA to Ratcliffe’s endeavors cannot be underestimated. The intersection of Bolinas with its artists, friends, and compatriots is notable, even for those unfamiliar with the various poetry movements, currents, and schools. Fast mapping
Fast mapping
In cognitive psychology, fast mapping is a hypothesized mental process whereby a new concept can be learned based only on a single exposure to a given unit of information...
the influence of this particular community onto the entire landscape of recent U. S. poetry is not entirely presumptuous, for as poet Alice Notley
Alice Notley
Alice Notley is an American poet. She was born in Bisbee, Arizona and grew up in Needles, California. She received a B.A. from Barnard College in 1967 and an M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa in 1969. She married poet Ted Berrigan in 1972, with whom she was active in...
, discussing 'space' in the work of Joanne Kyger
Joanne Kyger
Joanne Kyger is an American poet. Her poetry is influenced by her practice of Zen Buddhism and her ties to the poets of Black Mountain, the San Francisco Renaissance, and the Beat generation.-Overview:...
, points out:
In a brief introductory note to a selection of interviews, Robert Creeley
Robert Creeley
Robert Creeley was an American poet and author of more than sixty books. He is usually associated with the Black Mountain poets, though his verse aesthetic diverged from that school's. He was close with Charles Olson, Robert Duncan, Allen Ginsberg, John Wieners and Ed Dorn. He served as the Samuel P...
remembers, with fondness and appreciation, what Bolinas meant to his vocation:
Poetics and recent work
When poet and critic Susan Stewart, in a recent work of criticism, discusses the connections between RenaissanceRenaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
poets, music
Music
Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...
, and temporality
Temporality
Temporality is a term often used in philosophy in talking about the way time is. The traditional mode of temporality is a linear procession of past, present, and future....
she may well have invoked the trajectory
Trajectory
A trajectory is the path that a moving object follows through space as a function of time. The object might be a projectile or a satellite, for example. It thus includes the meaning of orbit—the path of a planet, an asteroid or a comet as it travels around a central mass...
of Ratcliffe's own poetic practice spanning nearly four decades now:
Ratcliffe recognizes that his own particular commitment to writing has, over the years, displayed itself as something which works "serially
Serial (literature)
In literature, a serial is a publishing format by which a single large work, most often a work of narrative fiction, is presented in contiguous installments—also known as numbers, parts, or fascicles—either issued as separate publications or appearing in sequential issues of a single periodical...
":
Ratcliffe's writing from the past decade, beginning with 2000's Listening to Reading and stretching towards his most recent (and 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 (hardly the only one one available), Ratcliffe's work not only addresses (tacitly) the now familiar concept of the "postmodern" '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
Poiesis
Poïesis is etymologically derived from the ancient Greek term ποιέω, which means "to make". This word, the root of our modern "poetry", was first a verb, an action that transforms and continues the world. Neither technical production nor creation in the romantic sense, poïetic work reconciles...
. It is an investment where Ratcliffe can actually perform
Such an intense avowal implicates Ratcliffe's project within a timeline moving forward from the Renaissance poets to Mallarmé
Mallarmé
Mallarmé can refer to:* Stéphane Mallarmé , French poet and critic.* François-René-Auguste Mallarmé , politician during the French Revolution....
and Henry James
Henry James
Henry James, OM was an American-born writer, regarded as one of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism. He was the son of Henry James, Sr., a clergyman, and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James....
, or moving backward in time from Leslie Scalapino
Leslie Scalapino
Leslie Scalapino was a United States poet, experimental prose writer, playwright, essayist, and editor, sometimes grouped in with the Language poets, though she felt closely tied to the Beat poets. A longtime resident of California's Bay Area, she earned an M.A. in English from the University of...
to the Language poets and Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein was an American writer, poet and art collector who spent most of her life in France.-Early life:...
. Along the way, in either direction, Ratcliffe may take instruction from practices as widely divergent as the radicalized "quietude" of Yvor Winters
Yvor Winters
Arthur Yvor Winters was an American poet and literary critic.-As modernist:Winters's early poetry, which appeared in small avant-garde magazines alongside work by writers like James Joyce and Gertrude Stein, was written in the modernist idiom, and was heavily influenced both by Native American...
, or the aleatoric music
Aleatoric music
Aleatoric music 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 determination of its performer...
and chance procedures of John Cage
John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...
. (see also: Aleatoricism)
"...[to] 'experience’ acoustically, something of the physics of the work, how it ‘works’ in that larger ‘shape’ of poems going on and on, one after another. . . Perhaps that subjectivity is what draws me to [Ratcliffe's] work..." |
| Jeffrey Schrader |
Thinking back over this trajectory we can note that amidst this creative flux, Ratcliffe never strayed far from the themes of "music" and "being in number" discovered, perhaps, in his initial "Campion project", and nor has he 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)
- [where late the sweet] BIRDS SANG (Oakland, CA: O Books, 1989)
- Sonnets (Elmwood, CT: Potes & Poets Press, 1989)
- Talking in Tranquility: Interviews with Ted BerriganTed Berrigan-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 in 1954 to serve in the Korean War. After three years in the Army, he finished his college studies at the University of Tulsa in...
(edited by Ratcliffe & Leslie ScalapinoLeslie ScalapinoLeslie Scalapino was a United States poet, experimental prose writer, playwright, essayist, and editor, sometimes grouped in with the Language poets, though she felt closely tied to the Beat poets. A longtime resident of California's Bay Area, she earned an M.A. in English from the University of...
). (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 / tryptych(s). The dates in [brackets] indicate the time period during which the work was written. For example [2.9.98. - 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) [2.9.98 – 5.28.99.]
- REAL (Avenue B, 2007) [3.17.00 – 7.1.01]
- CLOUD / RIDGE (Ubu editions, 2007) [7.2.01. – 10.18.02] – #25 in the “Publishing the Unpublishable” series available complete and on-line here
- Triptych/Trilogy ~ each book is 1,000 pages/days:
- HUMAN / NATURE (Ubu editions, 2007) [10.19.02. – 7.14.05.] – #26 in the “Publishing the Unpublishable” series available complete and on-line here
- Remarks on Color / Sound (Eclipse, 2010) [7.15.05. – 4.9.08.] – available complete and on-line here
- Temporality [4.10.08. – 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 [1.4.11] (January 4, 2011). Perhaps a new triptych has been started.
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
- Ratcliffe Author Page @ PENNSound
- poems from Temporality
- poems from CLOUD / RIDGE
- CLOUD / RIDGE 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
- HUMAN / NATURE 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