Alan Shields: Protracted Simplicity

Carter Ratcliff is a poet who writes about art. He first published his poetry in The World and other magazines in the orbit of the St. Mark's Poetry Project, in downtown Manhattan. In recent years poems of his have appeared in The Sienese Shredder, The Mississippi Review, Cimarron Review, Hudson River Art, Vanitas, Cover Magazine, among other journals; and in INFILTRATION: AN ANTHOLOGY OF INNOVATIVE POETRY FROM THE HUDSON VALLEY (Station Hill, 2015); The KGB Bar Book of Poems (Harper Perennial, 2000); and Poetry After 9/11: An Anthology of New York Poets (Melville House, 2001). His books include Fever Coast (Kulchur Press, 1973); Give Me Tomorrow (Vehicle Press, 1983); ARRIVEDERCI, MODERNISMO (Libellum Press, 2004); and TEQUILA MOCKINGBIRD (Station Hill Press, 2015). A Contributing Editor of Art in America, Ratcliff has published art criticism in leading journals in the United States and Europe, as well as catalogs published by the Museum of Modern Art; El Museo del Barrio; the Guggenheim Museum; the Royal Academy, London; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; and other institutions. Among his books on art are The Fate of a Gesture: Jackson Pollock and Postwar American Art (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1996); Out of the Box: The Reinvention of Art 1965-1975 (Allworth Press, 2000); and Andy Warhol: Portraits (Phaidon Press, 2006). Since 2003, Ratcliff has lived with his wife, Phyllis Derfner, in the Hudson River Valley.