Void Studies

Void StudiesRachel Boast''s extraordinary new collection realizes a project that the French Symbolist poet Arthur Rimbaud had proposed but never written. tudes nantes was to consist of poems written as musical tudes; these would not convey any direct messagebut instead summon the abstract spirit of their subject. This impossible project has been completed by Boast in the most astonishing way and in doing so she has increased the expressive possibilities of poetry itself. These tone poems are indeed works of pure musicbut despite their esoteric nature are by no means difficult in the usual sense: instead they conjure the recognizable states emotions moods ambiances and strange atmospheres that lend our lives meaning and together comprise a kind of lexicon of feeling. Void Studies is an airy and beautiful bookone in which Boast has spun a pure music to both ask and answer the most profound questions poetry can frame.