In Lusions, the internationally acclaimed poet James Ragan casts his eye on modern and ancient history in poems that put an original spin on the progression of the world. These are lyrical and witty poems about change and cultural evolution from an intellectual and insightful mind. Ragan explores humankind's cultural and mythical identities - from Prehistory, in which he muses on the "Birth of God (from an Early Photograph)" and "The Pebble Culture," when our distant ancestors turned "violence into culture," to the New World, where he covers such topics as Tuzla, the inner city, and the construction of a city mall. Once he catches up to the Premillennium, Ragan's poems are overwhelmed by a return to nature, perhaps the only antidote to our electronic age. Through brilliant wordplay and striking images, Lusions invents a mysterious and imaginative discourse on the point where the past and the present meet and the impact they have on a fragmented culture.

Reviews

The poems in this volume traverse time. From prehistory and the "Birth of God (from an Early Photograph)" to the construction of a suburban mall, Ragan is searching for reason and sense, in the flow of events, the passage of days. "It was to be a simple creation. An exercise at most/ of mischief, to play at quarks like building blocks,/ replenished and diminished, and by its cycle/ a god might gain domain. We would call it nature." Once God creates human nature, the poems collect moments of life, from a gazelle's "Birthing a Daughter into the Holocene Epoch," to man's simple but never-ending wars against his lawn. The rewards are many here. "Let all buckets fill, all loss be light./ I saw two girls weaving rainbows in their eyes,/ and daughtering in me their dreams, I grew/ astonished by all conception,/ the frail grandeur of life." Recommended for serious poetry collections.?Louis McKee, Painted Bride Arts Ctr., Philadelphia
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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