Crisis Actor: Poems - Paperback

by Declan Ryan (Author)

The brilliant and bracing debut collection of poetry from Declan Ryan: a writer, critic, and fierce new literary voice.

Declan Ryan's Crisis Actor chronicles various kinds of failures and farewells. It is peopled by faded heroes and deferential devotees, a hanged donkey and a bloated rat, solitary bachelors and disillusioned youths--these are the watchers, not the players. The poems are awash in rueful self-accusation and laconic skepticism. There are touching elegies, reportage, and bruised, wary replayings. A blistering sequence about boxers and their fates weaves through the collection. The overwhelming sense is of life going on elsewhere, the halcyon days and brightness of years long past. This is the aftermath of being one who--in Matthew Arnold's words--"has reached his utmost limits and finds . . . himself far less than he had imagined himself."

Author Biography

Declan Ryan was born in Mayo, Ireland. His essays and reviews have appeared in many journals, including The New York Review of Books, The Guardian, The Observer, The Times Literary Supplement, The Baffler, Los Angeles Review of Books, Poetry, and Boxing News. He lives in London, England.