Crisis Actor: Poems

The brilliant and bracing debut collection of poetry from Declan Ryan: a writer, critic, and fierce new literary voice.

Declan Ryan's Crisis Actor chronicles various kinds of failures and farewells. It is peopled by faded heroes and deferential devotees, a hanged donkey and a bloated rat, solitary bachelors and disillusioned youths—these are the watchers, not the players. The poems are awash in rueful self-accusation and laconic skepticism. There are touching elegies, reportage, and bruised,...