New And Selected Poems
“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 fifteen 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.
1100302764
New And Selected Poems
“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 fifteen 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.
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New And Selected Poems

New And Selected Poems

by Michael Ryan
New And Selected Poems

New And Selected Poems

by Michael Ryan

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Overview

“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 fifteen 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780547561592
Publisher: HarperCollins
Publication date: 12/06/2005
Sold by: HARPERCOLLINS
Format: eBook
Pages: 160
File size: 205 KB

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.

Read an Excerpt

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.

Table of Contents

from Threats Instead of Trees, 1974
Speaking3
The Myth4
The Blind Swimmer6
Pastoral8
Prothalamion9
Hitting Fungoes10
Letters from an Institution12
Deathwatch15
This is a poem for the dead16
A Posthumous Poetics17
House18
from In Winter, 1981
Poem at Thirty21
When I Was Conceived25
Consider a Move26
The Pure Loneliness27
Where I'll Be Good28
A Shape for It29
A Changed Season30
Gangster Dreams31
Memory32
In Winter33
All the Time34
Sex35
from God Hunger, 1989
Not the End of the World41
My Dream by Henry James44
This Is Why46
TV Room at the Children's Hospice48
The Gladiator50
Milk the Mouse51
Meeting Cheever52
"Boy 'Carrying-In' Bottles in Glass Works"54
Winter Drought55
Spider Plant57
Through a Crack58
Sea Worms59
The Past61
A Burglary62
A Splinter71
One73
Portrait of a Lady75
First Exercise77
The Ditch79
Smoke81
Houseflies82
Larkinesque83
The Crown of Frogs85
Passion89
Pedestrian Pastoral92
Moonlight93
Fire94
Tourists on Paros95
Crossroads Inn96
A Postcard from Italy97
Stone Paperweight98
God Hunger99
Tanglewood100
Switchblade102
New Poems
A Two-Year-Old Girl in a Restaurant107
Outside108
The Music House109
The Use of Poetry111
My Other Self113
Bunny115
Birthday118
Ash Pit119
Tutelary120
In the Sink121
Ballad of The Four Last Things122
Chronic Severe Incurable123
Mr. Pain Speaks for Himself124
God125
Wings of the Morning126
Tribute127
Flimsy128
The Others129
A Good Father130
Every Sunday131
A Dead Girl132
Distant Friend133
Dickhead134
Complete Semen Study136
Eschatology138
Extended Care139
Dream Pun on "Single Man" Before Marrying Again140
An Old Book in Florence142
A Version of Happiness145
A French Cafe in Orange County147
Reminder148
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