Poet as Phenomenologist

Luke Fischer (PhD, University of Sydney) is an independent scholar and award-winning poet. He has held post-doctoral fellowships and taught at universities in the U.S. and Germany and is an honorary associate in the philosophy department at the University of Sydney, Australia. His research focuses on interdisciplinary connections between poetry and philosophy. His publications include the poetry collection Paths of Flight (2013), articles, translations, and poems in journals, anthologies, and edited volumes, as well as a book of bedtime stories (The Blue Forest, 2014). He won the 2012 Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize, has been shortlisted for the Newcastle Poetry Prize, and was commended in the 2013 FAW Anne Elder Award for a first book of poems.

This thick volume's appeal will be limited to two small but intellectually impassioned audiences: scholars of the interrelations of philosophy and poetry in general and those specifically interested in Rilke as a philosophical poet in the tradition of Hölderlin … Fischer's command of the vast secondary literature of his chosen fields is remarkable. The author does a good job reminding readers of what has been covered as the text moves along … A remarkable effort of great erudition and insight, this book will find a place in the field of phenomenology of literary aesthetics as well as Rilke studies. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students and researchers.

• Introduction Chapter 1. Phenomenology and the Problem of Dualism Chapter 2. Learning to See: Rilke and the Visual Arts Chapter 3. Rilke as Seer: A Twofold Vision of Nature Chapter 4. The Neue Gedichte as a Twofold Imagining of Things Conclusion Epilogue Bibliography Index