The Redcoats

by Ryan Murphy

Poetry. THE REDCOATS is a book of doubts. An elegy and celebration of those fragments of a specific American history always at risk of reduction to kitsch and irony. These poems attempt to manufacture a sense of identity from the contradictions of a self-consciously contemporary perception of these historical tropes, and the overwhelming sense of being ill-equipped to abide in those perceptions. Rather than applying a historical context to the contemporary, THE REDCOATS provides a contemporary context to the historic (in the manner, for example, of the painter Larry Rivers).This makes it perhaps a sad book, or a book with more dislocation than comfort, but with the ambition to find and occupy a space between, to at least temporarily balance the blind acceptance of a moral and nationalistic absolutism (which may also stand in here for a kind of New England spirituality) and a comic and ironic rejection of those mores in the face of contemporary life. THE REDCOATS recognizes a pressure to enjoy the spoils of our national mythology and the absurdity of anxiety in an age of easy antidote, modern medicine, and quotidian comfort. A history, however, not regarded with either pure rapture or dismissive disinterest but with an unsettling combination of both.

Genres: Poetry

88 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

Ryan Murphy is the author of Millbrook, The Redcoats, and Down with the Ship. He has received grants and awards from the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Chelsea Magazine, The Fund For Poetry, and The New York State Foundation for the Arts.

Reviews

[A.M. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read The Redcoats by Ryan Murphy three different times over the span of a week and simply could not connect with the poetry at all. I even read the reviews on the back of his book twice, they are so beautifully written, trying to see what these other individuals saw in this collection of poetry.

For me, the poems are simply too abstract and enigmatic. Reading them was like trying to find meaning in a game of Pick Up Stix. I saw nothing in the seeming randomness of the words other than an occasional powerful image or line with no support for its purpose in being there. In fact, I have a friend who writes a blog called Fueled by Randomness, which perfectly describes my feelings about this collection of poetry. This title could be appropriate for the collection, for I could not see how anything I read had to do with the American Revolution. In fairness to the poet, though, I simply did not understand what I was reading.

That said, I really liked the poem "Autumn is for Bells" in Book Three:

"Autumn is for bells
And sagging ceiling plaster.

Oars plough wake:
Warn and victim we.

I'm afraid to die
But RJ Reynolds whispers that I'm not
And dying I believe him.

This is not the same as weeping for a cat's mortality."

I also love the line, "Morning comes in its big white hearse," though I do not know where Murphy was going with it upon reading the rest of the poem.

There are other lines that seem a bit absurd, like "Brushing, she bruised her wonderful hair."

Finally, I can only reiterate that I tried very hard to connect with the poet and his world but could only stare in numb confusion at the cacophony of words upon the page.

[Becky · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lines I wish I'd written:
"stunned to stillness with impending"
"streetlights canker the park night"
"the body strung vibrant/ with rigging"
"the incoming tide/like a bowl of nickles"

[Eddie Watkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Refined & intimate music - lovely lyrics. Touches of Zukofsky, without the unseen parts of Z's intellectual iceberg. Disjunctive and experimental but in an immediately accessible indie rock way.

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

best book of poems EVER

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

a very interesting set of very recent poems. it's cool to read something this new.