The Richard Ronan Poetry Collection
Let us worship in sweat and love the shapes,
–from Die Kunst der Fuge, A Radiance Like Wind or Water (1984)
for at last they are few, they are precious,
and we are falling,
brief as music.
Poet
Richard Louis Ronan brought to his poetry the flavors, intuitions, and instincts of a gay
man with a New Jersey Catholic childhood, an award-winning job as a
teacher of troubled children in New Jersey, a Masters from University
of California at Berkeley, and a life with partner Bill Pittman that
was cut short by AIDS. American Poetry Review editor David Bonanno
calls him “one of the most important Post-Stonewall Poets” in this
poetry that witnesses lust, human love, identity, survival, and how art
can witness and sing against the complex corners of life.
The
Richard Ronan Collection at Dominican University brings together many
of Ronan’s rare and out of print books, including bound copies of many
of the writers’ plays, a very rare copy of the chapbook A Lamp of Small
Sorrows (coming soon), and copies of several of his poetry books.
Additional resources available at the university include the short
poetic biography Richard Ronan (written by Dominican Associate
Professor Jan VanStavern) and copies of several of Ronan’s final
poems.
Photograph by Maz Livingston
(University of Pennsylvania Archival Collection)
