New And Selected Poems

Michael Ryan

• Publisher: Ecco
• Year: 2005
• ISBN:
  9780547561592
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Women in Poetry
• Index: Literature

"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 WorldMichael 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 ReviewMichael 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.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• Copyright
• Dedication
• FROM Threats Instead of Trees
• Speaking
• The Myth
• The Blind Swimmer
• Pastoral
• Prothalamion
• Hitting Fungoes
• Letters from an Institution
• Deathwatch
• This is a poem for the dead
• A Posthumous Poetics
• House
• FROM In Winter
• Poem at Thirty
• When I Was Conceived
• Consider a Move
• The Pure Loneliness
• Where I'll Be Good
• A Shape for it
• A Changed Season
• Gangster Dreams
• Memory
• In Winter
• All the Time
• Sex
• FROM God Hunger
• Not the End of the World
• My Dream by Henry James
• This is Why
• TV Room at the Children's Hospice
• The Gladiator
• Milk the Mouse
• Meeting Cheever
• "Boy 'Carrying-In' Bottles in Glass Works"
• Winter Drought
• Spider Plant
• Through a Crack
• Sea Worms
• The Past
• A Burglary
• A Splinter
• One
• Portrait of a Lady
• First Exercise
• The Ditch
• Smoke
• Houseflies
• Larkinesque
• The Crown of Frogs
• Passion
• Pedestrian Pastoral
• Moonlight
• Fire
• Tourists on Paros
• Crossroads Inn
• A Postcard from Italy
• Stone Paperweight
• God Hunger
• Tanglewood
• Switchblade
• New Poems
• A Two-Year-Old Girl in a Restaurant
• Outside
• The Music House
• The Use of Poetry
• My Other Self
• Bunny
• Birthday
• Ash Pit
• Tutelary
• In the Sink
• Ballad of The Four Last Things
• Chronic Severe Incurable
• Mr. Pain Speaks for Himself
• God
• Wings of the Morning
• Tribute
• Flimsy
• The Others
• A Good Father
• Every Sunday
• A Dead Girl
• Distant Friend
• Dickhead
• Complete Semen Study
• Eschatology
• Extended Care
• Dream Pun on "Single Man" Before Marrying Again
• An Old Book in Florence
• A Version of Happiness
• A French Café in Orange County
• Reminder