Poetry Books

Poetry Books by Ray McNiece

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Ray's latest release...  Our Way of Life      Many photos - take time to load
  

What others have to say on Ray...

    "...a born poet and a born performer..."
- - Yevgeny Yevtushenko, legendary Russian poet

    "Make no mistake, Ray McNiece is a patriot in the truest sense of the word. He has America coursing through his veins, and his poems are an open highway with a cool Midwestern wind blowing through them. 'Our Way of Life' is a cathartic journey, taking you from meditations on the atrocious war in Iraq to homages to the nation's great living poets, and ending in the nooks and crannies of a country that, despite the heartache found permeating everything, is still alive, vital and staggeringly beautiful in ways that are breathtaking to behold."
-- Victor D. Infante, Editor in Chief, "The November 3rd Club"

     “Where would we be without the voice of Ray McNiece? Who else would sing of the migrations from Appalachia to Ohio, dance the Slovenian Polka, wail the blues for broken New Orleans, mourn the destruction of our last pristine land, rail against the corruption of corporate government, ache for the victims of torture and war, then croon love songs to Cleveland? Who else would connect us with what makes us human? Ray McNiece is our Whitman, our bard, our bodhisattva, our conscience.”
- - Robert Miltner, Kent State University, Author of Rock the Boat and Fellow Traveler.

      "It's not enough for an artist to be angry. He also has to be good. And Ray McNiece is good and angry in these poems (Our Way of Life) that burn as hot and bright as the extinct blast furnaces of Ohio once did. Whitman, whose ghost is everywhere in these lines, called America "the greatest poem." And I am happy that Ray McNiece's passionate, relentless voice will not stop until he has made us understand how much we have lost."
- - George Bilgere, John Carroll University, author of The Good Kiss

    It is a poet’s job to tell the truth. McNiece strips away the multiple coats of yellowing varnish in Our Way of Life laying bare a distressed yet solidly built realism. Rather than the usual pop cynicism - these poems embrace an idealism of what should and could be while invoking the language of a poet’s poet. Like a canary in a coal mine he beckons us to come above ground and breathe deep – before it is too late.
- - Michael Salinger, Cleveland Poetics, author of Neon. 

Available for purchase direct from the author on this website.

$15.00, shipping & handling. 

Educators:  If you are an educator, English or poetry professor, teacher, or poetry workshop leader, you 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 website. Questions or comments, contact Ray.  Contact Ray

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The Road That Carried Me Here

The book...and there is a CD. Hear "The Road..."
Sample Sound, 60 seconds, audio sample, Ray's CDs

The CD

Now in its 4th printing, it was published in its first edition as part of the Working Lives Series by Bottom Dog Press, Huron, Ohio, Ray McNiece, Copyright, 1998. 109 pages. ISBN 0-933087-51-9
Short, sample poem below.

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    

Sample (one of the shortest poems in the 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. 

The Road... available for purchase direct from the author on this website.
$9.95, shipping & handling. 

Educators:  If you are an educator, English or poetry professor, teacher, or poetry workshop leader, you 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 website. Questions or comments, contact Ray.  Contact Ray

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America Zen

$15.00, shipping & handling.  Educators:  If you are an educator, English or poetry professor, teacher, or poetry workshop leader, you 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 website. Questions or comments, contact Ray.  Contact Ray

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Song that Fathoms Home

$12.00, shipping & handling. 

Educators:  If you are an educator, English or poetry professor, teacher, or poetry workshop leader, you 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 website. Questions or comments, contact Ray.  Contact Ray

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The Bone-Orchard Conga

Library of Congress
 Catalog Number 94-65383

Fourth Edition now in print. Poem below with brief sound sample from the CD

 mouth music

Copyright, 1997, Third Edition, published by Poetry Alive! Publications, Asheville, NC. 96 pages. $9.95, shipping & handling. Purchases direct from the author. See details below. 
ISBN 1-883731-08-9

Illustrations by Michael Shores and Angela Mark. 

Sample poem below, and with sound sample below if you have very fast connections

Reviews and Comments...

    "Ray McNiece is an adept reader of his own moving, clearly inmaged poems, a skilled performer who does the English language justice. " 
- - X.J. Kennedy, Lamont Poetry Prize Winning Poet. 

    "McNiece smoothly blends fine writing with an angry political conscience. His folksy but honed poems are drawn from the heart of the working class."
-- Amy Sparks, Free Times

    "A warm, wise, gracious guide through an infirm world he teaches his leader how to love." 
-- David Evett, Cleveland State University Poetry Center

Adjust your volume controls. Note:  Best on DSL or ASDL. for slow modems, great patience...may not work on all browsers.

Click [Sample] to hear a short sample (not complete) from
The Inevitable Movement of Love - text below
go to CDs for the CD

The Inevitable Movement of Love

$ 9.95, shipping & handling. 

Educators:  If you are an educator, English or poetry professor, teacher, or poetry workshop leader, you 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 website. Questions or comments, contact Ray.  Contact Ray

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Published by Fractal Edge Press, Copyright 2004 by Ray McNiece, First Edition

ISBN:  1-933126-10-8
Price:  $12.00
Book & Cover Design:  Wayne Allen Jones
Cover Graphic:  Kristen Stuart (Duhame) Lodestar Visions

     New program on US? - Go to What's new, Ray? for a description not only of the program, but the book.CLICK ON THE FLAG THERE FOR A PDF: FULLER DESCRIPTION

   "McNiece smoothly blends fine writing with an angry political conscience. His folksy but honed poems are drawn from the heart of the working class."
-- Amy Sparks, Free Times  

$12.00, shipping & handling. 

Educators:  If you are an educator, English or poetry professor, teacher, or poetry workshop leader, you 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 website. Questions or comments, contact Ray.  Contact Ray

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Published by Burning River, 
Copyright, 1989.
 

Collector's Editions ONLY.
Original printing, 1989 edition. Available from the author on this website only. Very few copies remain. $ 25.00 plus shipping and handling. 

In the works...

DIS:  Voices From A Shelter  THE FINAL VERSION. For plans and what is happening with this effort, contact Ray. More, scroll down

$ 25.00, shipping & handling. 

Educators:  If you are an educator, English or poetry professor, teacher, or poetry workshop leader, please feel free to comment on works directly to Ray, or to send your comments for us to post on the website. Questions or comments, contact Ray.  Contact Ray

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       wet sand,
     raven tracks

Reviews and Comments...

$12.95, shipping & handling. 

Educators:  If you are an educator, English or poetry professor, teacher, or poetry workshop leader, you 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 website. Questions or comments, contact Ray.  Contact Ray

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