The World in Place of Itself

Bill Rasmovicz

“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

With fervent physical and metaphysical detail, and narrating from an unexpected angle of perception, Bill 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.

From “On Becoming Light”:

And there it was, the moth;
a child’s hand wrestling itself in the grass.
Delirious, it fumbled its way out from the dark umbrella
of a tree, then landed on the stoop.

A frayed rope of light swung from the porch.
The moon was gorged on the dewy foment of summer.

I set my hand near, and it fluttered into my palm:
its weight no more than breath, its wings,
laments hammered into sheets of dust.

Bill Rasmovicz is a graduate of the MFA writing program at Vermont College and Temple University School of Pharmacy. His poetry has appeared in Mid-American Review, Nimrod, Hunger Mountain, Third Coast, and other magazines. He lives in New York City.