The World in Place of Itself
Bill Rasmovicz
This hypnotic, neo-baroque debut reads like transcribed fever dreams, employing elements of film noir and surrealism. Observing from an unexpected angle of perception and with absorbing physical and metaphysical detail, Rasmovicz plumbs the world ghosting this one, exposing the true nature of the unconscious—a superconscious whose language is startlingly apt imagery and ecstatic description.
"This passionate debut from New York City–based Rasmovicz places him on an unfamiliar border, between the haunted generalities of Franz Wright and the hunted, bomb-damaged villages of Charles Simic."
—Publishers Weekly
"Bill Rasmovicz gives us the world in fine detail. City life, shoreline, night, loss and its shadow, desire—these come to us through an intelligence fully attuned to metaphor’s striking shifts from sight to insight. This is lyric poetry at its best, fully accomplished, probing, deeply felt, with delicate wit and language—oh the language!—stunning enough to pass Miss Dickinson’s test."
—Betsy Sholl
"The clear intensity of the visionary requires stillness, not high speeds. And there is a restlessness at the heart of such stillness that Bill Rasmovicz’s first book gets at more exquisitely—with a voice that can bear it—than any I’ve read in years. His surreal practices are humanizing faith-keepings with the metamorphic, the elemental, the actual."
—William Olsen
"Incredibly moving and smart, this book is indeed a world in place of itself, and more, in place of the world we thought we knew. With stunning metaphors, fast paced leaps and tone shifts within a seamless art, we discover new ways of seeing at almost every line, a palimpsest of visions in every poem of this fabulous book."
—Richard Jackson
about the author
Bill Rasmovicz is a graduate of the Masters of Fine Arts in Writing Program at Vermont College and Temple University School of Pharmacy. His poetry has appeared in Mid-American Review, Gulf Coast, Terra Incognita, Nimrod, Hunger Mountain, Third Coast, Puerto Del Sol, Comstock Review, Poetry Miscellany, The Café Review and other magazines. He lives in New York City.
Author photo by K. Erickson
two poems from the world in place of itself
electronic press kit (pdf file)
