Rarity and the Poetic - by Harold Schweizer (Hardcover)

About the Book

"Rarity is a quality by which things-flowers, leaves, light, sound-fleetingly appear and disappear, leaving in their wake a resonance of something we just thought we had glimpsed. In this book, the author examines the imaginary or poetic dimensions of rarity. It comes about in the hushed spaces between stanzas, in the pauses between words and lines, in speechlessness. A flower, a silence in a room, a mournfully muttered 'oh, ' thorns and dark seeds, even rugs and tables, a hummingbird, the papery gown of a brother dying, all have rarity. Rilke's phrase 'the gesture of small flowers when they open in the morning' serves as an exemplary image of material and mental rarity. "--

Book Synopsis

Rarity is a quality by which things flowers, leaves, light, sound fleetingly appear and disappear, leaving in their wake a resonance of something we just thought we had glimpsed. Each of the nine chapters in this book pursues such intimations of rarity in poetic ideas, images, and silences.

About the Author

Harold Schweizer is Professor of English at Bucknell University, USA, where he teaches literary theory and poetry. He has co-edited the 12 volume series The Bucknell Lectures in Literary Theory; he is the author of Suffering and the Remedy of Art, On Waiting, and a volume of poetry, The Book of Stones and Angels.