New And Selected Poems

“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 World

Michael 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 Review

Michael 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.

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The long-anticipated release of this new collection of poetry features the author's attention to form as well as wit and intelligence as he takes on a wide variety of subjects in eighty-nine poems, including works from three earlier volumes, as well as more than thirty original poems. Winner of the Kingsley Tufts Award. Reprint.

Michael Ryan is the author of three previous books of poetry. Threats Instead of Trees won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award and was a National Book Award finalist in 1974; In Winter was a National Poetry Series selection in 1981; and God Hunger won the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize in 1990. He is also the author of A Difficult Grace, a collection of essays, and a memoir, Secret Life. His new memoir was excerpted in The New Yorker and will also appear this spring. Ryan is a professor of English and creative writing at the University of California, Irvine.