New Release: Jean Ryan’s Luminous Poetry Collection, ‘A Day Like This’ Now Available
I’ve been a fan of Jean Ryan’s superb writing for quite a few years now, and what could be more exciting than a new collection of her poetry? I ordered this the instant I knew it was available. Jean is a writer’s writer, whether it’s short stories, novels, astonishing nature essays, or poetry. And she’s an excellent painter, too! Poetry is the foundation of so much of what we call good writing, and Jean delivers. I’ve been devouring her poems one by one, and now they’re available in a single volume. Buy it here.
In the title poem of Jean Ryan’s luminous new collection, her speaker sees swallows slicing the air, observing, “Short dark arrows, they never miss, their flight too swift for error.” I can’t think of a more apt description for A Day Like This, in which poem after poem so vividly penetrates to the core of lived experience. Ryan’s poems have an ease of movement and transparency of structure I find most enviable. She has a special gift for finding what remains fresh and particular inside the ancient stuff of poetry. This is a gorgeous book, powerful and assured, written by a poet who is elegant, concise, honest, and warm-hearted in her approach. I can’t recommend it enough. A quietly masterful work.
—Erin Belieu, author of the poetry collections Come-Hither Honeycomb, Black Box, Slant Six, and One Above and One Below
“I live simply, with no hope for humanity,” confides the clear-eyed narrator of Jean Ryan’s A Day Like This, though these are not cynical poems; rather, each poem surprises with an unexpected turn and, in this turning, reveals the sense of peace—even hope—that can be found in looking elsewhere, away from human destruction, and toward small delights and solitude, toward love and animals and “the sturdy world of plants, poised to regain lost ground.” These are poems to be read aloud to those you love or to yourself; or to be parceled out, quietly, one a day like a form of meditation; or to be consumed voraciously in a single sitting.
—Lori Ostlund, author of After the Parade and The Bigness of the World
With A Day Like This, Jean Ryan reminds us that there is beauty and meaning in the most ordinary moments. To my delight, I hear echoes of Mary Oliver in Ryan’s rhythms and images, and like Oliver, she speaks up for those beings that lack traditional voices, then transforms our understanding of them. Because Ryan’s poetry is so accessible, it can be deceiving in the complexity of ideas it brings forward and in the range of emotion it sparks. A Day Like This will not just charm you, it will make you look at the world with fresh eyes and grant you license to retain hope.
—Mark Hummel, author of Man, Underground and editor of bioStories magazine