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Mills College English Professor Stephen Ratcliffe Releases Reading the Unseen: (Offstage) Hamlet
Oakland, CA–November 12, 2009. Mills College English professor and acclaimed poet Stephen Ratcliffe has released his newest book, Reading the Unseen: (Offstage) Hamlet (Denver: Counterpath Press, 2010), which explores the presence and significance of offstage action in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Ratcliffe focuses his analysis on the numerous important events and actions in Hamlet that the audience learns about through characters’ words, but does not physically witness onstage. Often vital in driving forward the story, these offstage actions include the murder of Hamlet’s father, Hamlet’s visit to Ophelia’s closet, Hamlet’s voyage to England, and Ophelia’s drowning in “the glassy stream.” “Hamlet is ground zero for offstage action in Shakespeare,” explains Ratcliffe. “It’s a play about words as ‘evidence’ of things; how words can make physically absent things imaginatively present. I hope readers will take away some new ideas about Hamlet, about how we read, and about the differences between reading the play on the page and seeing it performed on the stage.” “Stephen Ratcliffe’s new study of Hamlet is nothing short of a small miracle,” says Marjorie Perloff, respected critic of contemporary poetry and professor emerita of English at Stanford University. “A poet’s ‘language book,’ it addresses what is clearly a central issue—but an issue often neglected: how the language of the play conveys those critical episodes of unseen action that haunt the tragedy. . . . Beautifully written and consistently perceptive, Reading the Unseen details the brilliant execution of these passages in Hamlet, making us rush to our bookshelves to reread the play—or to see its next performance!” A poet, critic, and educator, Stephen Ratcliffe’s recent books include REAL, a 474-page book of poems written in 474 consecutive days (Avenue B, 2007). Previous works include Portraits & Repetition (The Post-Apollo Press, 2002) and SOUND/(system) (Green Integer, 2002). Listening to Reading, a collection of essays on contemporary experimental poetry, was published by SUNY Press in 2000. He is also the author of Campion: On Song (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981). Ratcliffe has been the recipient of the Gertrude Stein Award for Innovative American Poetry, as well as awards from the National Endowment for the Arts and Fund for Poetry. Ratcliffe has taught at Mills College for 25 years. His poetry has been widely published in books and journals, and his small press, Avenue B, has published the writings of innovative contemporary poets including Maxine Chernoff, Jackson Mac Low, Clark Coolidge, Jena Osman, Susan Gervirtz, Elizabeth Willis, and Ron Padgett. Ratcliffe earned his BA, MA, and PhD degrees at the University of California at Berkeley. About Mills College Nestled in the foothills of Oakland, California, Mills College is a nationally renowned, independent liberal arts college offering a dynamic progressive education that fosters leadership, social responsibility, and creativity to approximately 950 undergraduate women and 550 graduate women and men. Since 2000, applications to Mills College have more than doubled. The College is named one of the top colleges in the West by U.S. News & World Report, and ranks as one of the Best 371 Colleges by the Princeton Review. Forbes.com ranked Mills 55th among America's best colleges and named it a "Top Ten: Best of the All-Women's Colleges." Visit us at www.mills.edu.
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