The Hunger Wall: Poems [Paperback]

James Ragan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 16, 1996

In 1992, critically acclaimed poet James Ragan was in Los Angeles when riots exploded across racial and class lines. That same year he was also living in Prague when Czechoslovakia divided into two separate nations, motivated by the principles of "nationalism." This odd coincidence forms the crux of his new, eagerly anticipated book of poetry. The poems in The Hunger Wall, named for a wall near the Prague Castle, take these two cultural sensibilities that seem worlds apart and explore the subtle nuances of their unlikely similarities. In beautifully crafted and metaphorically rich language, Ragan studies what it means to set a "border," whether it be political, racial, or economic. The Hunger Wall examines a continually changing world — a world of shifting cultural identities in which the widening gap between the rich and the poor is dangerously explosive.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

The jacket copy informs readers that Ragan was inadvertently caught in the center of two cultural explosions-Prague when Czechoslovakia revolted against Soviet domination in 1968 and the 1992 Los Angeles riots. There's also a flashback to the Watts riots of the Sixties. Yet the most important elements missing from these poems are energy and immediacy. Pompous and presumptuous, his Prague poems betray a tourist sneering at tourists. The poet lives in Southern California, so we turn to the Los Angeles poems in hopes they'll be more insightful. Instead we find cliches. From a reflection on the Pacific Ocean, "a whale dives up/to branch the shores of memory extinguished in our hearts." These are "selfish" portraits: the poems carry dedications, lives are cryptically described (facilitating recognition by family and friends), then laid on the page like stagnant, uncaptioned pictures. There is no movement, and consequently no emotion. Not recommended.
Rochelle Ratner, formerly Poetry Editor, "Soho Weekly News," New York
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From the Inside Flap

In 1992, critically acclaimed poet James Ragan was in Los Angeles when riots exploded across racial and class lines. That same year he was also living in Prague when Czechoslovakia divided into two separate nations, motivated by the principles of "nationalism." This odd coincidence forms the crux of his new, eagerly anticipated book of poetry.

The poems in The Hunger Wall, named for a wall near the Prague Castle, take these two cultural sensibilities that seem worlds apart and explore the subtle nuances of their unlikely similarities. In beautifully crafted and metaphorically rich language, Ragan studies what it means to set a "border," whether it be political, racial, or economic. The Hunger Wall examines a continually changing world--a world of shifting cultural identities in which the widening gap between the rich and the poor is dangerously explosive.

"James Ragan's poems are full of arresting collocations and striking phrases. Sometimes the latter are mysterious, and sometimes (as in 'the mimosa breathing the wind's still spirit') they take a fresh look at some aspect of the world. 'Audienea,' from which I have just quoted, is one of the most satisfying poems in this distinctive book."--Richard Wilbur

"In present-day poetry, few things are more anticipated than this book by a poet who dominates the art of image, the art of poetic line, and the art of poetic narration to the level where the poems form a permanent stream of revelations."--Miroslav Holub

"These poems seek the core of feeling in the intertwined personal and political dramas of eastern Europe and southern California. They walk carefully in a hardbitten time, recording the lives and places that tell of the struggle between beauty and evil, and of the rage for identity in this near-millennial period. Here is the lush lyricism of a hungry eye and an open heart."--Marvin Bell

"A testament to universal brotherhood, a celebration. He is my brother."--Yevgeny Yevtushenko

"James Ragan's poetry lights the passage to the larger world of global citizenship."--William Matthews

"In Jim Ragan's poetry, there is a lyrical fusing of innocence and wisdom. It is this juxtaposition that makes his work so exhilarating."--Studs Terkel

"James Ragan's poetry is splendidly candid, original, energized, connected to the real world, honed, humane, connected to a series of finely articulated voices, full of nuances, of music, of idioms he's heard and invented."--Michael S. Harper

James Ragan has lived in Paris, Prague, London, Athens, and Beijing and has been honored here and abroad as an ambassador of poetry. In 1985, he was one of three Americans, along with Robert Bly and Bob Dylan, invited to perform at the First International Poetry Festival in Moscow. He is the recipient of numerous poetry honors, including two Fulbright professorships, the Emerson Poetry Prize, two Pushcart Prize nominations, and the Poetry Society of America Gertrude Claytor Award. He has also been a finalist for the Walt Whitman Center Book Award and the PEN Center West Poetry Prize. He is the author of In the Talking Hours, Womb-Weary, and Lusions, and co-editor of Yevgeny Yevtushenko: Collected Poems 1952-1990. His plays include Saints and Commedia, first produced by Raymond Burr in the United States and later in the Soviet Union. Ragan is the director of the Gradute Professional Writing Program at the University of Southern California.

Product Details

• Paperback: 112 pages
• Publisher: Grove Press; Reprint edition (August 16, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802134785
• ISBN-13: 978-0802134783
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.3 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,035,432 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "The Hunger Wall" by James Ragan, March 16, 2007

By 

Poetry Supporter - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Hunger Wall: Poems (Paperback)

The poems in James Ragan's "The Hunger Wall" are reflective, mixing conscious memory with unconscious imagination. No other poet has so profoundly described the widening abyss between the rich and the poor that prompted both the 1992 Los Angeles riots (unfortunately mistaken by some with the 1965 Watts riots) and the split that occurred six months later between Slovakia and the Czech Republic. The various forms of oppression captured by Ragan's astute personal observations are deftly recreated by one who has been there. These poems are dry ice smoking from contact. Ragan chronicles the near-fatal death of the soul and its ultimate emergence.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hunger That Satisfies, June 29, 2008

A Kid's Review

This review is from: The Hunger Wall: Poems (Paperback)

A deeply unsettling yet elegiac collection in symphonic form that explores concentric locations and the sense each have within the author, the reader, and the metaphysical space between both. A personal template for the poetic condition and ambitions therein. Ragan's wide travels and world-class accomplishments as a professor of letters are richly, lovingly documented here. Ratner's review is astonishingly obtuse in the matter of what constitutes 'poetry,' a brush-off as inaccurate as it is absurd