Rapture [Paperback]

Susan Mitchell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 22, 1992

Rapture is the newest collection from a remarkable voice in American poetry. Susan Mitchell's poems are about self-discovery, and how memory and experience blend to lead us to newer, more realized and complex selves. Mitchell's gift is her ability to see, with humor and acuity, the extraordinary within the commonplace. Whether listening to a jazz pianist reaching for new sounds as he lingers over a hotel piano or recalling a runaway child on a bus trip across America, Mitchell guides us into a world of her narratives, a world in which she creates her reality by the mere act of observing it, and this reality, at once wholly unique and deeply familiar, has an exhilarating capacity for transcendence. Combining a boldly realistic vision with graceful, evocative lyricism, and moving easily between free verse and elegant versification, Rapture confirms Mitchell's place as one of the most compelling poets writing today.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The boldness of Mitchell's ( The Water Inside the Water ) tone is established with startling openings and audacious connections from one subject to the next. Sometimes there are flashes of Erica Jong's sexual bravura or Diane Wakoski's offbeat associative leaps. In one poem the speaker begins with the memory of a line of conversation, "He said I want to kiss you in a way / no one has ever kissed you before." After recalling fantasies of adolescence, she returns to the braggadocio of the opening remark, far more memorable than the kiss itself, which was offered like the careless eating of an apple or pear. Mitchell's imagery is often quite attractive. For example, a dressmaker's house visited in childhood was entirely "furred like a cat." Most of the poems are built in informal and colloquial blocks of language, the lines breaking to emphasize ironies. The settings are various: Cuba in the '50s, a bar in Chicago, the pond outside a Howard Johnson's motel. In the last poem lies a confession: "my subject is not what it seems. I want / to explain how it is for me / all the time now. . . . " In fact, this unabashed self-absorption is at the center of all the work.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Mitchell's poems demonstrate an intelligence that is rare, an elegance and grace uncommon in contemporary poetry. Her world is one of mystery, at once familiar and exotic. Memories melt into dreams. The language is charged, words are valued, and every moment is allowed to play out forever, fresh, vital. A piano wants to be played "like a pinball machine, it wants the man to lean his weight/ against the music until the sound tilts. But the man/ wanders inside the piano like someone looking/ for an elevator in a drafty building." The precision of her imagery, the similes and the leaping metaphors are regular sources of delight. A line from Holderlin about a plant brings forth a memory story (more story than memory, it turns out) of a handicapped childhood friend. Patrons of public libraries will find much to appreciate here.
- Louis McKee, Painted Bride Arts Ctr., Philadelphia
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 96 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial; 1 edition (April 22, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060969067
• ISBN-13: 978-0060969066
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,036,152 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Rapturous!, June 28, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Rapture (Paperback)

This volume of poetry is one of the most impressive I've read in a long time. S. Mitchell is the only poet I know who can successfully fit all the essential ingredients of enduring poetry with innovative, contemporary charm, in such a fiercely high spirited way, into one poem. Really, in short, this book blew me away.

Mitchell's energy is such that you feel she is taking you to ride a little on the wild side -- this is also, perhaps, where the innovative elements of her poems come in. I was disappointed when my friend didn't seem to like this volume (after I had recommended it so eagerly), and it is no surprise that she prefers classical *sensible* poetry -- with rigid meters, rhymes or some definite form -- and if you are a reader who prefers such poems, I wouldn't at first recommend this book to you. However, if you are not the exacting type, and rather than scrutinizing want to enjoy a fabulous book of poetry, I highly recommend this. But I believe this book also certainly deserves being recommended to even the 'classical' poet. There is just something universal about the spirit of poetry that Mitchell portrays so perfectly in her words, and I guarantee that you'll agree, after you give this a fair chance.