- Hardcover: 160 pages
- Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; None edition (Mar 6 2004)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0618408541
- ISBN-13: 978-0618408542
- Product Dimensions: 23.1 x 15.7 x 1.8 cm
- Shipping Weight: 386 g
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #2,088,509 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Details |
Product Description
Review
Michael Ryan's three collections-the Yale Younger-winning Threats Instead of Trees (1974), the National Poetry Series selection In Winter (1981) and the Lenore Marshall-winning God Hunger (1989)-are represented by 11, 12 and 34 pieces, respectively, in his New and Selected Poems, along with 31 new verses. In all, Ryan's straight-talking diction moves quickly from interjection to conversational analysis to terse, noirish declaration: "Oh well,/ whatever heart-bursting terror// I'm supposed to learn in dreams/ could be useful someday/ when a beloved voice screams/ and life changes utterly// No one's immune./ It's happening to someone right now./ The police, the ambulance,/ these strangers in the house." (Publishers Weekly )
Product Description
Michael Ryans New and Selected Poems is the first collection to appear in fifteen years from this acclaimed and masterly poet. Comprising fifty-seven poems from three award-winning volumes and thirty-one brilliant new poems, it displays the wit and passion he has brought to universal themes throughout his career. In both dramatic lyrics and complex narratives, Ryan renders the world with startling clarity, freshness, and intimacy. Ryans poems are filled with the stuff of everyday life: What-a-Burger, Space Invaders, the hood ornament / on some chopped down hot rod of the apocalypse. He observes his subjects in carefully wrought detail and with a fierce compassion, describing stupid posters of rock stars in the bedroom of a murdered teenager, or a homeless boy straggle-haired, bloated, / eyes shining like ice. As Ryan writes of others, in a final Reminder to himself: their light their light / pulls so surely. Let it. This long-awaited collection shows Ryan at the height of his powers. As William H. Pritchard said in The Nation, Unlike too many poets who tumble into print at the first twitch of feeling, Ryan takes time to listen to himself, and such listening contributes immeasurably to the subtlety of his address to the reader . . . [He] reminds us on every page that poems can be about lives, and about them in ways most urgent and delicate.
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Real Poet,
By A Strong Poet (Evanston, IL United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: New and Selected Poems (Hardcover)
Picking up the torch of Elizabeth Bishop, this book of poems captures the mingling of the mysterious and the mundane in our every day lives. Like Vermeer's interiors, these poems catch moments of intimacy to which everyone can relate and yet seem to transcend time.Many poems today touch the ears, but none touch the heart like Ryan's.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
5.0 out of 5 stars (1 customer review) 7 of 10 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Real Poet,
By A Strong Poet - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: New and Selected Poems (Hardcover)
Picking up the torch of Elizabeth Bishop, this book of poems captures the mingling of the mysterious and the mundane in our every day lives. Like Vermeer's interiors, these poems catch moments of intimacy to which everyone can relate and yet seem to transcend time.Many poems today touch the ears, but none touch the heart like Ryan's. |
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