Rapture

By Susan Mitchell

Book Overview

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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060969067
• ISBN13: 9780060969066
• Release Date: April 1992
• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Length: 96 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 6.1" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Rapturous!

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.