Bøger af John J. Ronan

The general theme of this book, and a number of its individual poems, is that love and language create community. There is little self- reference and confession. Set in Gloucester, New York, or Paris, in Panama or Newtown, the poems come from a commitment to civic poetry, a poetry of social place and witness. Civic poetry is poems written for the public on community topics; poetry accessible to an attentive, general audience. And since it is often meant to be read in public, civic poetry relies on sound and familiar forms: rhyming tricks, assonance, consonance, regular rhythms, refrain and stanza, couplets, etc. And of course, civic poetry, like all poetry, is insightful, well-crafted and fresh, never talks down, and is never watered down.Besides accessibility, sound, rhythm, and freshness, there is another necessary ingredient in civic poetry: hope. Not innocent or immature hope, nothing naive. It may be a battered hope, even diminished, but is not cowed or faint, remains brassy, unabashed. Civic poetry makes no apologies for believing in our stressed and distorted, but wonderful national experiment.

Like the crows he describes in one of his witty, wry poems, John J. Ronan casts "a cold eye on life, on death." These edgy, intelligent poems brim with emotion without ever nearing the sentimental. Ronan revels in life and laments inevitable time, but does not wallow. An Irish American steeped in dark joy, Ronan reveals roots in Yeats, Heaney, Mahon and others. "To exist and then not to exist—it''s a raw sort of humor," he writes. In his work we see both the raw surface and always, always the humor. These poems are a joy to read.