Portrait of James Ragan by Danuta Rothschild

A Voice in Transit: the Poetry of James Ragan

Edited by Flávia Rocha

For James Ragan, a poet’s ultimate commitment is what he calls “the nobility of conscience.” Tradition is to be carried generously, written and spoken. Poetry travels and makes an impression wherever it lands, an intimate, powerful one. It moves boldly, like the river in the imagistic poem “Hanger Wall” that James Ragan recited to the President of the Czech Republic and 500 guests in a castle in Prague, in 2008.  And it moves gently like “a kite, sipping in a breeze,” daringly like the Everest quivering “into an avalanche of cloud,” wisely like the Dalai Lama’s prayer, and the “cry of a generation.”

James Ragan’s lyrical, transient poetry reaches out. He likes to tell stories, keep photographs of all special moments and people he has read with and shaken hands in understanding. As an ambassador of poetry, he has traveled the world, has read at the United Nations, and for six head of state in Eastern Europe and Asia. In 1985, he read with Seamus Heaney, Robert Bly and Bob Dylan at the First International Poetry Festival in Moscow to an eager audience experiencing Perestroika for the first time.

But it’s at home, with his family, that his poetry reveals yet another – tender – layer of consciousness. The videos that accompany the poems presented in this section will show you more of the person behind the poet. You will find here a selection of poems that delve in to his history, a video interview, readings (including a poem by his daughter Tera Vale Ragan and a performance of original music by his son, Jameson Ragan), and a speech from the heart: “The Artist and the Nobility of Conscience”, by James Ragan.