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. 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... 

The following poems were performed by James Ragan from his books for the President of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Klaus, and 500 guests at Hradcany Castle in Prague on November 5, 2008: by James Ragan IF FOR EACH OF US a rope could swing us long and light across a widening trough of all that fails us in our lives, I would want to land upon the Isle of Echo, lush with repetition, green with being original... 

The Keynote Address by James Ragan  at the Word Literature Today Conference, Normal University,  Beijing, China,  October 16, 2008 by James Ragan It has been said that man’s innate proclivities for creation and destruction are so inventive and so apocalyptic that in their genius lies the “unwritten” testament to man’s future. It is to his art, however, to his prose and poetry,... 

by James Ragan LUSIONS In the laugh belly of too little thought, a lusion is eating up the mind for nothing. It needs no compensation for the distance it will travel or the time it takes to eat the hum of reason out of tongues. It is only the brief nuisance of its love for laughter that keeps the mind whole. In the laugh belly of our prehistoric skulls, lusions like tumors in the brain grow secret...