The Idea of Light
John’s latest poetry collection, The Idea of Light, is now available from Main Street Rag Publishing Company.
“Ronan responds to complex emotional and relational experiences with forthright language imbued with rhythm, sound, and agile syntax. His poems are valued companions.” – Martha Fox (This Arc of Assurances, Whitehall and Coplay)
“The poems in John’s new book soar between earth and sky, body and soul, the sacred and the profane with deftness and ease.” – Kristin Czarnecki (Encounters with Inscriptions, Sliced)
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“News of a new collection of poems by John Ronan is always a thrill.” – Kate McCann (Barn Sour, Sail Away the Plenty)
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Poem Samples
Explore a few selected poems from John’s latest collection.
Princess Ennigaldi
In the museum, seniors avoid children,
The knots of uniformed students who herd
Toward Egypt, ooh and ahh at mummies.
We’re off to the calm, unvisited wings
Of quiet, timepiece coins, the clay
Masks of Mycenae, carved jewels
From Babylon, the pottery of Kish and Ur—
Where the young Ennigaldi, daughter of Nabonidus,
Assembled the world’s first museum
In 530 B.C.
With something like the urgency of a teen memoir.
Ages before the mosaics of Pompeii, the Alhambra,
Feudal tapestries, cathedral glass.
Before voyages of discovery and the New World
Founding of Boston’s descendant museum,
Its New England period rooms
And soft benches, this artifact afternoon.
Whatever was the Princess thinking?
An A.M. April Sky
God-wandering Jupiter, Saturn and Mars
Clear a maple in our suburban yard and stare
Steadily down, the gaze behavior of gods.
Given the Romans’ needy, geocentric lens:
Light-Bringer, Harvest, Father of War,
Now in Capricorn (loyalty) and Aquarius (brains).
Post-Copernicus, we understand ecliptic paths,
The flicker-killing arc seconds of a disk,
Present metrics describing hydrogen giants
And rock: an earth-size hurricane, rings
Of water ice, bellicose iron oxide,
Fixed diameter and distance, temperature, mass.
Info courtesy of probes and rovers, orbital
Eyes and soil samplers, a branding bot that’s
Given us the Columbia Hills, the Rolling Stones…
Ardent, early-rising amateurs log
Coordinate sets, epoch and transit times.
Magnitude makes the planets easy to track
As they outshine stars in the slowly brightening sky
And the convenient names of deities are conserved.
Mowing Toads
Toads will bound out from the mower in May,
The prosperous knot annual survivors of sleet
And snow, northeasters, spring’s Biblical rain.
I scoop my fellow mortals up and set
Them gently down among the fenced flowers.
Ugly? Cause of warts? In need of kissing?
In a fit of sympathy, Dives ignores folklore,
Imagines the pounding pellet heart, escaping
The nick in time – even as adrenalin prompts piss
In the kindly fist bearing the beast to safety.
I do mow a toad at times, a foolish
Concern as the generations certainly succeed.
And yet regrettable: Bufo americanus, guts a-glay,
Violence on an otherwise perfect suburban day.