Void Studies, Rachel Boast’s extraordinary new poetry collection,
realises a project that the French Symbolist poet Arthur Rimbaud had
proposed, but never written. Études néantes was to consist of poems
written as musical études; these would not convey any direct message –
but instead summon the abstract spirit of their subject.
This ‘impossible project’ has been completed by Boast in the most astonishing
way. These tone poems are indeed works of pure music – but despite their
esoteric nature are by no means ‘difficult’ in the usual sense: instead
they conjure the recognisable states, emotions, moods, ambiences and
strange atmospheres that lend our lives meaning, and together comprise a
kind of lexicon of feeling. Void Studies is an airy and beautiful book –
one in which Boast has spun a pure music to both ask and answer the most
profound questions poetry can frame.
