Mercurial, or Is That Liberty - by Rachelle Rahmé (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A lyrical reckoning with a dualism that has been accepted, rejected, embedded in an endless cycle of self-critique, until the boarder between its apparent halves became chipped, scuffed, no longer fitting together, then scoured, submerged in a watery subconscience, faded, and a gradient was formed by the fractal nature of its bonding, making something mercurial, or is that liberty?

Review Quotes

"Fluidity and magical tangibility of wild mind has wonderful hold of the magnitude of poetry's ability and original impulse to startle and command. Rachelle Rahmé's imagination and drive in language, its moves and permutations is extraordinary. Sublime. Necessary to feel, hear, breathe this vital collection. Mercurial indeed, as it returns again, again. To startle and please and awaken the intellectus for lovers of poetry. Her passion kicks it, more than ever. Now, and now, the Eternal return."-- "Anne Waldman"

"Rachelle Rahmé is the daimon that contemporary letters needs. She is a manifold of many axes: assassin & philosopher, delinquent & mother. Mercurial, this book, is pure lagnia for the everyday. It is pure lagniappe, pure bonus, manakish flour watered, kneaded & baked in a Bataillean sun. The living room follows her. The ambience has hints of Zürn's Dark Spring, Robertson's Baudelaire Fractal, Pizarnik's Stone of Madness, & Forrest-Thomson's Language-Games. Suicide is a taciturn calico cat she pets with an index finger beneath the chin. Liberty is the light that varies through the windows at any hour. Revolt courses through the fixtures. Mercurial captivates; & if, in her world, glances lead to cruising, then, in reading, who knows where stairs lead? She burns books in the hearth at night because they kindle better & smolder longer. This hell we live in is a cooler home for it."-- "Aristilde Kirby"

"Rachelle Rahmé treats each reader as a new confidante. Her silvered voice is held taut, often flexing with the light. Matters of poetics are expertly hashed out among the hassles and glamour of everyday life. She can sketch a set scene or go tearing through several painted backdrops one after another. Her voice is so highly activated. A secret and bristling landscape is uncovered at every break in the line."-- "Cedar Sigo"

"Rahmé alchemicalizes blood as a mirror for the poem and the poem as a mirror for erotics. The erotics of conversation, movie going, and living on the inside of history pulse through this collection like a sun."-- "Chariot Wish"

About the Author

Rachelle Rahmé (Author)
Rachelle Rahmé is a Lebanese-American writer and scholar interested in collaborative liberation methodologies. Rahmé is the author of the chapbooks Count Thereof Upon the Other's Limbs (72 Press, 2019), Puce Commodity (earthbound, 2020), Bataille's Eggs (blush, 2021), At Crepuscule Remember Aqueducts (Wonder, 2023), Protest and Orison (Belladonna* Collaborative, 2023), and Hieroglyphics Then and Now (Spiral Editions, 2023). Her translations of the philosopher Georges Bataille's occupation poetry were published by o-blēk in 2021 as 27 Poems on Death. Superveillance, her speculative fiction novella, was published in an artist's edition by Aventures Ltd in 2029.