A Secret History of the Nighttime World

Welcome to the world of Jason Ryberg--a world of true crimes and misdemeanors in the American grain, transformed, through the poet's retelling, into miniature works of art.

"Rattlesnake tough but also tender-hearted." -Kevin Rabas, Poet Laureate of Kansas (2017-2019)

Reading Ryberg is like driving a pick-up truck across Kansas on shrooms, and his imagery, as fresh as a midnight S curve, takes the reader on a journey from city streets to wheat fields, navigating through a landscape bright with the "five-battery-flashlight of a moon." A Secret History of the Nighttime World, the twelfth book of poetry by Ryberg, delivers one great breath of fire directly from his heart onto the page.

Jason Ryberg is the author of twelve books of poetry, six screenplays, a few short stories, several angry letters to various magazine and newspaper editors, and a box full of folders, notebooks and scraps of paper that could one day be (loosely) construed as a novel. He is currently an artist-in-residence at both The Prospero Institute of Disquieted P/o/e/t/i/c/s and the Osage Arts Community. He lives part-time in Kansas City, with a rooster named Little Red and a billy goat named Giuseppe, and part-time somewhere in the Ozarks, near the Gasconade River, where there are also many strange and wonderful woodland critters.