<p><em>A new collection from the world-renowned lyricist</em></p><p>Acclaimed American poet James Ragan begins this newest collection of poems by asking whether &ldquo;a rope could swing us / long and light across a widening trough / of all that fails us in our lives.&rdquo; With these very first lines, Ragan draws readers into his world of vivid metaphor and evocative imagery, a world tinged with an aching sense of loss born of &ldquo;a mind bereaved by solitude.&rdquo;</p><p>Yet if Ragan needs solitude to construct his poems, we are inspired to join him. In <em>Too Long a Solitude</em>, he takes us on far-flung journeys from equatorial jungles to Arctic icebergs and from heartbreaking loneliness to ecstatic human connection. Readers become travelers, with Ragan their insightful guide.</p><p>&ldquo;Ragan&rsquo;s fine-grained poems move us through a remarkable range of total dexterity,&rdquo; says poet C. K. Williams, and a strong streak of Wordsworthian nature-worship runs through the book. In &ldquo;Bowing Trees,&rdquo; this contemporary lyricist sings of saplings tending &ldquo;to their ground as if the space were an altar.&rdquo; His itinerant attention focuses in turn on the hills of London, rural roads in Belgium, and a garden wall in Vienna. Some journeys have the specificity of a scene witnessed (a Paris alley that might have entranced Picasso); others are journeys of the mind (a ride caught on an ice floe heading north out of Hudson Bay).</p><p><em>Too Long a Solitude</em> migrates from isolation to communion. Beginning alone on an iceberg, we eventually find ourselves at one with a lover in a moonlit vale. As solitude lifts and the journey ends, the poet finds he need no longer travel to find solace. But we&rsquo;re glad, all the same, to have shared the journey with him.</p>