Too Long a Solitude by James Ragan

8.8/10 dropps

In the opening lines of Too Long a Solitude, mid-western poet and playwright James Ragan asks whether “a rope could swing us / long and light across a widening trough / of all that fails us in our lives,” and with that he invites the reader to journey with him, constantly in motion from one stanza to the next.

Ragan is a critically acclaimed poet who has spoken in front of five heads of states, Carnegie Hall and the United Nations, and he has been praised by former U.S. poet laureates. But with all of these accolades, Ragan has largely gone by unnoticed in the 21st Century world of poetry, especially when compared to the likes of someone like Billy Collins.

Maybe that’s because Ragan’s work is a subtle kind of beauty. The little details are what add up in the end to make Too Long a Solitude a work of quiet genius. It’s the repeating consonants, the sudden shift in rhythm from one line to the next, or the way he forms a sentence which envelops you in a vivid scenario, whether it be a literal walk down a Paris alleyway or a mental ride on an ice floe caught in mixed seas. Ragan uses movement between isolation and community to lead you on to the next poem. He speaks of solitude and finding yourself in the remote, but he also encourages the company. You can tell he wants you to join him.

On “Hitchhiking to the Arctic,” Ragan writes, “Any floe will do, but give it a name, / the Pater Noster, for a start, or the Isle of Latitudes / drifting North of Iceland out of Hudson Bay / in seas as mixed as the Bering Strait.” His poetry is soaked in Romanticism. The fixation on nature runs throughout the entire collection. It’s as if he’s a modern day Thoreau sitting in the middle of nowhere, looking for his true calling.

That being said, Ragan doesn’t necessarily cater to a mass audience. Where the likes of Collins takes the simplicity of language and uses it to discover deep meaning in life’s hardest moments, Ragan explores the complexities of the language. Most casual readers probably won’t be surprised to find themselves sitting next to a dictionary while reading Solitude. But that shouldn’t deter anyone either. Just like how the speaker in his poems constantly discovers new lands, new life, and new ways of viewing the world, you may find yourself discovering words that create deeper meaning in the poetry.

There’s a distinct sense of satisfaction when reading Too Long a Solitude. You can almost hear the soft-spoken voice of the seasoned professor, poet and playwright as he reads aloud right in front of you. By the end of the collection he manages to take the reader from that one, isolated iceberg in the beginning to a loving, fulfilling companionship in the end. His visceral details (“the image will turn / to aureoles of: gold, rose, vermillion”) are striking and make for a poetry reading different from many others today. The end of the collection will leave you content, able to lie and be satisfied without the need of continuing any more journeys. But, still, Ragan’s ability to take you through those journeys in the first place was all you ever needed anyway.

–Robert Miller