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Too Long a Solitude

Too Long a Solitude

James Ragan
4.4/5 ( ratings)
A new collection from the world-renowned lyricist

Acclaimed American poet James Ragan begins this newest collection of poems by asking whether “a rope could swing us / long and light across a widening trough / of all that fails us in our lives.” With these very first lines, Ragan draws readers into his world of vivid metaphor and evocative imagery, a world tinged with an aching sense of loss born of “a mind bereaved by solitude.”

Yet if Ragan needs solitude to construct his poems, we are inspired to join him. In Too Long a Solitude, he takes us on far-flung journeys from equatorial jungles to Arctic icebergs and from heartbreaking loneliness to ecstatic human connection. Readers become travelers, with Ragan their insightful guide.

“Ragan’s fine-grained poems move us through a remarkable range of total dexterity,” says poet C. K. Williams, and a strong streak of Wordsworthian nature-worship runs through the book. In “Bowing Trees,” this contemporary lyricist sings of saplings tending “to their ground as if the space were an altar.” His itinerant attention focuses in turn on the hills of London, rural roads in Belgium, and a garden wall in Vienna. Some journeys have the specificity of a scene witnessed ; others are journeys of the mind .

Too Long a Solitude migrates from isolation to communion. Beginning alone on an iceberg, we eventually find ourselves at one with a lover in a moonlit vale. As solitude lifts and the journey ends, the poet finds he need no longer travel to find solace. But we’re glad, all the same, to have shared the journey with him.
Language
English
Pages
88
Format
Paperback
Publisher
University of Oklahoma Press
Release
February 01, 2009
ISBN
0806140178
ISBN 13
9780806140179

Too Long a Solitude

James Ragan
4.4/5 ( ratings)
A new collection from the world-renowned lyricist

Acclaimed American poet James Ragan begins this newest collection of poems by asking whether “a rope could swing us / long and light across a widening trough / of all that fails us in our lives.” With these very first lines, Ragan draws readers into his world of vivid metaphor and evocative imagery, a world tinged with an aching sense of loss born of “a mind bereaved by solitude.”

Yet if Ragan needs solitude to construct his poems, we are inspired to join him. In Too Long a Solitude, he takes us on far-flung journeys from equatorial jungles to Arctic icebergs and from heartbreaking loneliness to ecstatic human connection. Readers become travelers, with Ragan their insightful guide.

“Ragan’s fine-grained poems move us through a remarkable range of total dexterity,” says poet C. K. Williams, and a strong streak of Wordsworthian nature-worship runs through the book. In “Bowing Trees,” this contemporary lyricist sings of saplings tending “to their ground as if the space were an altar.” His itinerant attention focuses in turn on the hills of London, rural roads in Belgium, and a garden wall in Vienna. Some journeys have the specificity of a scene witnessed ; others are journeys of the mind .

Too Long a Solitude migrates from isolation to communion. Beginning alone on an iceberg, we eventually find ourselves at one with a lover in a moonlit vale. As solitude lifts and the journey ends, the poet finds he need no longer travel to find solace. But we’re glad, all the same, to have shared the journey with him.
Language
English
Pages
88
Format
Paperback
Publisher
University of Oklahoma Press
Release
February 01, 2009
ISBN
0806140178
ISBN 13
9780806140179

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