In the Talking Hours

by Ragan, James

• ISBN13: 9781928746096
• ISBN10: 1928746098
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-05-01
• Publisher: Herodias

Summary

In the Talking Hours, James Ragan's first book of poems -- originally published in 1979 -- unleashes its raw energy and emotional power like a collection of classic paintings brought forth in a new retrospective. Hailed by Josephine Miles as the work of "an authoritative voice who will be recognized as an important voice", this distinguished collection is imbued with the social turbulence of the times and the emotions of a young poet coming to terms with his family, mortality, and the absurdities of modernity.

Table of Contents

The First Evolution: Fish and Wild Onions	3	(4)
Ether Room
Insomnia: Gathering Bones	7	(2)
Eye Meditation for Insomniacs	9	(1)
On the Nature of Snoring	10	(2)
A Dead Twin Prays on the Eve of My Surgery	12	(2)
Bone-Step	14	(1)
Hammer	15	(1)
The Wounds	16	(1)
Gerasim	17	(1)
Losing a Sense of Balance	18	(1)
Ether Room	19	(2)
Tattoo: Your Dream the Night Before a Birthday	21	(1)
Cacophony	22	(1)
Bloom Falling Awake	23	(1)
Change of Season	24	(2)
Cancelling My Twenty-Sixth Year	26	(3)
Deathwatch
Prey and Predators	29	(2)
Aryan Devolution: For Eleven Israeli Athletes in Munich	31	(4)
Fire Near Dead-Stream Road	35	(1)
To the Bronzed Mermaid on the Bowsprit of a Trawler, Aground Off Monomoy, Cape Cod	36	(1)
Sisyphus Blind	37	(2)
Archaeology in a Shoe	39	(4)
Recovery
Delivering My Brother, the Last Born	43	(1)
Prime Mate	44	(2)
Waiting for the Bus at Midnight	46	(2)
Defense Summation in the Trial of Hans Wilbur	48	(2)
Smoking Permitted to the Left	50	(1)
Her Fourth Ph.D. Discuss Party	51	(1)
Underground Wine Cellar, Athens, Greece	52	(2)
Backward Years	54	(5)
In the Talking Hours
In the Talking Hours	59	(2)
Bringing a Stark Reality to the Screen	61	(1)
Dead Black Judy	62	(3)
Moon Cows and Cow Tails	65	(2)
Lombardo at Midnight, New Year's Eve, 1972	67	(2)
Just that Moment	69	(3)
Umbrella Man of Duquesne	72	(2)
Huckster at Noontime	74	(3)
To Pregnancy	77	(4)
The Singing Hour
Junky Saints	81