The Absent
by Rosalind Palermo Stevenson

fiction

The Absent’s themes are one and many, connecting as they are layered: early photography, 19th century Philadelphia, the resonant voices of women, the fusion of landscape and man, westward expansion, grief and mourning, memento mori. Rosalind Palermo Stevenson’s poetic prose narrative is a meditation that travels between east and west and interior and exterior; a meditation driven by the narrator’s desire to render, with his mind and with his camera, what is absent present. 
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“An astonishing combination of dreaminess and precision.”

—Mary Gordon, The Liar’s Wife; Pearl; Final Payments

“What is perhaps most extraordinary of The Absent's many achievements is its egalitarian voice. Its singular lyricism evokes a hallucinatory vision in which every element of the interior self finds an exterior and crystalline lucidity. The texture and contours of consciousness, what we recognize as the images of our obsessions, quotidian objects replete with their psychic claims, ambient light and dust-- Palermo Stevenson is attentive to the urgency of each. Every sentence offers evidence of the intricacies of our personal fugue.”

—Lloyd Lynford, The Quality of the Affection

cover art: Seurat, Georges (1859-1891), The Veil, ca. 1883. Conté crayon. 31.5 x 24.2 cm. RF38977, Photo: Thierry Le Mage.
Musée du Louvre

© RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY

Excerpt

WIPs Interview