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Reviews and Comments... In this new collection Ray McNiece takes us with him
on his road journey through the broken heart of America. These are poems
of great joy and deep sorrow expressed with honest voice and sure, clear
craft. This new book makes it clear why poetry matters to McNiece and to
us all.
"Ray McNiece's Road that Carried Me Here is really almost a
picaresque novel of an Appalachian anit-hero (himself) on the road that
lead Kerouac nowhere except into himself. But McNiece has farther to
go..."
- - Lawrence Ferlinghetti
"Part of McNiece's charm is his mission to demystify poetry, having
come from a hard-working blue collar family with roots in the
heart-scrabble Celtic Appalachia and Slovenian Cleveland. Like James
Wright's work, these poems show a narrative style, acute attention to
Nature and an emotional affinity with those whose luck has run
out."
- - Amy Sparks, Free Times
"Ray McNiece is a rare poet who fully understands the
honest heart & soul of contemporary American poetry. In one poem,
Ray can have his readers laughing so hard that they'll swear they just
heard the best bar joke in an after work saloon in Youngstown, and in
the next poem he leaves his readers pondering the past deeply while
listening to their heartbeats echo through the side streets of ethnic
Cleveland. Ray's the real deal."
- - M.L. Liebler [back to
top]
Sample (one of the shortest poems in the whole book):
Staring at a Heron
August. Hazy. Midday.
I stand in the heron's stare,
the heron stands in this stare.
Neither of us will move.
Lulled to the same leisure
by the weather we share,
here we are each other.
Here a sample, The Road..., at
ray's CDs
Educators: If you are an educator,
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may purchase in quantity for a discount. Please feel free to comment
on works directly to Ray, or to send your comments for us to
post on the web site. Questions or comments, contact Ray.
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