Opening the Eyelid

by David Rattray

5-1

Genres: Poetry

Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

David Rattray (1946-1993) was a poet and translator who trained at Harvard and the Sorbonne. Fluent in Greek, Latin, French, German, and other languages, he is best known for his translations of 20th-century French writers Antonin Artaud, René Crevel, and Roger Gilbert-Lecomte. He also worked as an editor for Reader’s Digest.

Librarian note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

David^^^Rattray

Reviews

[Sean Lally · Rating 5 out of 5]

...Each poem is an image newly formed threatening to fade in the stratospheric winds (“The poem is more (I think) like a mountain in a cloud, bright but not totally visible”) and though ontologically unstable, they are incandescent in their effect, like the welder’s torch at the corner of 12th and 1st which shot “in a million little/ orange streaks/ in front of a dark open door/ a stream of scintillations/ moving right to left/ like the mirror script/ in a dream the night before/ that I’d held up/ to a glass/ which at the very instant/ I could read it/ cracked.”

David’s cracked mirror is our cracked mirror. He may go far in his poems, but they’re never out of reach, never simply obscure. There’s always a floor and a ceiling to make us feel at home. And if we ever feel lost in the allusive tapestry of his erudition or in the undulating quality of his poems — their back-and-forth movement between registers of perception — we can take refuge with him as he walks the length of Napeague Beach searching for just a few colors and a thought about illumination, marveling at the simple association between clamshells and a sky shifting into twilight. There, we can take a few deep breaths and sense something of the life in these poems... a few more thoughts here: https://mydearanacolutha.wordpress.co...

[Mitch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rattray's first full book, amazing, since it was published fairly late in his life. Intense poems, on death, drugs, consciousness & everything in the universe. A true radical poet, Rattray lets it all hang out in these poems. Beautiful production, too on this book. David translated all kinds of great French writers, including most of the City Lights Artaud anthology. His taste was great, and he was completely fearless. He would say anything, with gusto. Fabulous poet. Crucial book.

[Brandon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Found this book of poems in a free box. All I had to do was read the poem "Outside the Red Bar" to know I had found a major score! Great collection.