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"This is a powerful first collection by a very promising new writer—successfully announcing what will hopefully be a long-lasting presence in contemporary poetry."—MARY: A Journal for New Writing
Selected by Jane Hirshfield from over six hundred manuscripts, Litany for the City is the winner of the tenth annual A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize. Of Litany for the City, Hirshfield writes, "This book carries both startling imaginative freedoms and the impulsion of a person navigating the terrain of his life by means of the star-chart and sextant of poems––a winning combination, for me."
Ryan Teitman is a Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford University. He holds an MA and MFA from Indiana University. He currently lives in Berkeley, California.
—Mary: A Journal of New Writing
"Things are changed by how they are used. Even the hot breath of a resolute sigh, trapped under a blanket at the moment of waking transforms into a 'coat of warmth / that I knew could / never fray.'" —Southern Indiana Review
“Litany for the City embodies the scope and complexity of an urban setting, as well as the emotive depth and wonder it is to be human. In the end, it is only this muddled and luscious reside of experience with its form fading into fume that one is left with, and Teitman proves it is more than enough.” —Todd McCarty, Gently Read Literature
“Teitman maps the way only a poet can map, sketching in then blurring out the borders between inner and outer with each line. It is the poetic act of noticing that finds cathedrals everywhere. And language, repetition, is what holds it all together … This book has a heart that goes beyond the strength of its crafting or imagery. It reminds us of what only poetry can do."—The Rumpus
Acknowledgements 2
Little Litany 4
I. Litany for the City 5
Philadelphia, 1976 6
Vespers 8
The Cabinet of Things Swallowed 11
Dear Doctor Franklin 13
Hard Light through Hemlock 15
Ars Poetica 18
Dear Doctor Franklin 21
The City that Swallowed the Sea 23
Cathedrals 25
Dear Doctor Franklin 27
A Sunday Box 30
Notes on the Twenty-first Century 31
Ode, Elegy, Aubade, Psalm 33
Strange Elegy 35
Ephesians 37
Vigils 38
Ode to a Hawk with Wings Burning 41
II. Foreign Films 44
Foreign Film at the Garman Opera House 45
Cinéma Vérité 47
Foreign Film at the Ritz at the Bourse 49
III. Metropolitan Suite 51