New and Selected Poems

by Michael Ryan

Michael Ryan’s 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.

Ryan’s 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.”

Genres: Poetry

160 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Poet and memoirist Michael Ryan was born in St Louis, Missouri. He studied at the University of Notre Dame and Claremont Graduate School, and earned an MFA and PhD from the University of Iowa.

Ryan’s first volume, Threats Instead of Trees (1974), won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award. His second collection, In Winter (1981), was selected by Louise Glück for the National Poetry Series. God Hunger (1989) won the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, and his New and Selected Poems (2004) was awarded the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award.

Over the course of his long career, Ryan has been praised for his formal control and, in the words of David Baker, his ability "to turn the apparently personal into the public and important." Writing in The Nation, William H. Pritchard alleged that Ryan "reminds us on every page that poems can be about lives, and about them in ways most urgent and delicate."

An acclaimed memoirist, Ryan's Secret Life (1995) was a New York Times Notable Book. His second memoir, Baby B (2004), was excerpted in The New Yorker. He has also published a book of essays on poetry, A Difficult Grace (2000).

Ryan has received numerous prizes for poetry, including a Whiting Writers Award and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. He has taught at such institutions as the University of Iowa (where he was an editor of The Iowa Review), Southern Methodist University, Goddard College, Warren Wilson College, and the University of California-Irvine, where he has been a Professor of English and Creative Writing since 1990.


(Poetry Foundation, 2011)

Reviews

[Dona's Books · Rating 4 out of 5]

For me, Michael Ryan's New and Collected Poems is an excellent read. Almost perfect. I was surprised to discover I enjoyed his earlier work more than his contemporary work, but I found pieces in both sections that I appreciated. I love Ryan's early style, notes of which I still see in the later poems -- a combination of familiar syntactical patterns with logically and linguistically strange imagery. We find this in "The Myth" (p.4): "Shouldn't we be ashamed?/ Isn't this history we imagine/ in that one's ugly movement/ of his arms? Her clumsy legs?" Structure works very well for many of Ryan's poems, in fact -- one of my favorite poems, "Death Watch," relies on it's very brilliant structure to build to an equal brilliant end.

I made a note, in reading Ryan's "Every Sunday" (pg131), wondering why must some writers be so helplessly cruel when they write about crazy people. I wonder this question often, given that I have lived all my life with severe mental illness. And also earlier in the same book, but decades before, Ryan writes, "Letters from an Institution," which may not have been compassionate, but was nuanced, thoughtful, maybe even empathetic in a certain spirit. Right up until the last line of the poem, that is, where he mention crazy again. So my question stands, but that does not mean I think you should read this book any less. Perhaps you should read it more, in fact.

I didn't favor Ryan's structured poems, such as "Milk the Mouse" (p51), as I thought Ryan's treatment of the restrictions let to clarity issues. But I truly enjoyed several of his poems. Many of them inspired my own work. I love the forceful, powerful tone and motion of "The Pure Loneliness" (p27). "First Exercise" (p77) is a supreme example of a narrative poem. There's too many to list.

Beautiful poetry in this collection. I love the variety represented by the different sections. My favorite pieces are the pieces mentioned in this review, and "God" (p125).

It's a good read, give it a look. Hope you find something in there!