New And Selected Poems - Softcover

Ryan, Michael

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0618619410 ISBN 13: 9780618619412

Publisher: Ecco, 2005

Synopsis

“Ryan is a scrupulously observant poet with a gift for going for the jugular . . . His work is finely honed, provocative, questing, and humane.” – Edward Hirsch, Washington Post Book World

Michael Ryan’s first collection in many years shows the acclaimed poet at the height of his powers. Highlighting the wit and passion displayed throughout his career, Ryan’s latest work comprises fifty-seven poems from three award-winning volumes and thirty-one new poems. In both dramatic lyrics and complex narratives, Ryan renders the world with startling clarity, freshness, and intimacy. New and Selected Poems is filled with the stuff of everyday life, and as the New York Times Book Review said, it “include[s] pain and fear but also surprise, joy, laughter, everything human.”

"New and Selected Poems reminds us how much we have relied on this poet to forge a path for us in plain style.” – Carol Muske-Dukes, Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Ryan's poems have always felt as if they neded to be written. They seem to exist because of some pressure to respond, not because of a facility for language alone. This is a rare quality among poets. The commitment to it is as hard-won, and real, as any you are likely to find in poetry." – David Rivard, American Poetry Review

Michael Ryan is the author of many acclaimed books, including three previous volumes of poetry. Among the honors for his work are the prestigious Kingsley Tufts Award, the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, a Whiting Writers’ Award, and NEA and Guggenheim fellowships. Ryan is a professor of English and creative writing at the University of California at Irvine.

About this title

About the Author

Michael Ryan is the author of three previous books of poetry. Threats Instead of Trees won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award and was a National Book Award finalist in 1974; In Winter was a National Poetry Series selection in 1981; and God Hunger won the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize in 1990. He is also the author of A Difficult Grace, a collection of essays, and a memoir, Secret Life. His new memoir was excerpted in The New Yorker and will also appear this spring. Ryan is a professor of English and creative writing at the University of California, Irvine.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Threats from Instead of Trees

Speaking

I’m speaking again as the invalid in a dark room.
I want to say thank you out loud to no one.
I want to suck my cracked lips in on the sound, as the sound dissolves slowly like a man living.

I’m painfully grateful there’s breath to make noise with, and many words have meaning. I feel lucky when hello doesn’t hurt.
On a bus, I could love anyone.

It’s not terrible to be alone.
Last night I talked to a person so haltingly I might have been looking for a word that wouldn’t change.
That made her misconstrue everything.

Did she feel what I thought she was feeling?
Did she feel me concealing the pleasure that keeps me going, as I circled that pleasure like a dog around its master?
This pleasure, for me, is speaking, as if words enclosed the secret in myself that lasts after death.

The Myth For a long time, nothing happened.
Then ancestors whispering, then fragments of a forgotten life disturbing ordinary actions: handling a stone, or bathing, you might think of the brain as a diamond.
Even thought was clear, like watching your lover explore the bottom of a deep lake.
Everyone became friends, mirroring one another’s most personal gestures.
The leaders said this happiness is round like bowls, and devised simple rituals in which touch wasn’t a form of searching a finger’s curving could articulate anything.

Still, some looked for damage in the hard scars on our bodies.
They reminded us of the years of pain, when anticipation meant only disappointment, and any object we desired would cut brutally through the skin.
Shouldn’t we be ashamed?
Isn’t this history we imagine in that one’s ugly movement of his arms? Her clumsy legs?

Reverting to privacy, we began to see less distinctly.
Sometimes, during an intimate talk, you’d swear you caught your best friend closing his eyes, as in sadness at his own reflection.

So we tried exhaustion, swimming alone for days. Slowly we noticed our bodies becoming smooth and beautiful, and the air seemed less necessary the deeper we dove. Maybe we forgot we were actually underwater, forgetting, as we did, all harm done, all we couldn’t be for one another.

Copyright © 2004 by Michael Ryan.
Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company.

About this edition

• Publisher: Ecco
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0618619410
• ISBN 13: 9780618619412
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 160