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    Litany for the City
    Litany for the City
    Litany for the City
    Ebook81 pages33 minutes

    Litany for the City

    By Ryan Teitman and Jane Hirshfield

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    About this ebook

    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 poemsa 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.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBOA Editions Ltd.
    Release dateApr 10, 2012
    ISBN9781934414811
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      Book preview

      Litany for the City - Ryan Teitman

      Litany for the City

      by

      Ryan Teitman

      Winner, 2011 A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize

      Selected by Jane Hirshfield

      Litany for the City

      Poems by

      Ryan Teitman

      Foreword by Jane Hirshfield

      A. POULIN, JR. NEW POETS OF AMERICA SERIES, NO. 34

      BOA Editions, Ltd.         Rochester, NY         2012

      Copyright © 2012 by Ryan Teitman

      Foreword © 2012 by Jane Hirshfield

      All rights reserved

      Manufactured in the United States of America

      First Edition

      12 13 14 15 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

      For information about permission to reuse any material from this book please contact The Permissions Company at www.permissionscompany.com or e-mail permdude@eclipse.net.

      Publications by BOA Editions, Ltd.—a not-for-profit corporation under section 501 (c) (3) of the United States Internal Revenue Code—are made possible with funds from a variety of sources, including public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency; the Literature Program of the National Endowment for the Arts; the County of Monroe, NY; the Lannan Foundation for support of the Lannan Translations Selection Series; the Mary S. Mulligan Charitable Trust; the Rochester Area Community Foundation; the Arts & Cultural Council for Greater Rochester; the Steeple-Jack Fund; the Ames-Amzalak Memorial Trust in memory of Henry Ames, Semon Amzalak and Dan Amzalak; and contributions from many individuals nationwide. See Colophon on page 80 for special individual acknowledgments.

      Cover Design: Sandy Knight

      Interior Design and Composition: Richard Foerster

      Manufacturing: Thomson-Shore

      BOA Logo: Mirko

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Teitman, Ryan T.

      Litany for the city / by Ryan Teitman. — 1st ed.

      p. cm.

      ISBN 978-1-934414-81-1

      I. Title.

      PS3620.E437L58 2012

      811'.6—dc23

      2011036882

      BOA Editions, Ltd.

      250 North Goodman Street, Suite 306

      Rochester, NY 14607

      www.boaeditions.org

      A. Poulin, Jr., Founder (1938–1996)

      For my parents

      CONTENTS

      Foreword

      I.  Litany for the City

      Philadelphia, 1976

      Vespers

      The Cabinet of Things Swallowed

      Dear Doctor Franklin

      Hard Light Through Hemlock

      Ars Poetica

      Dear Doctor Franklin

      Cathedrals

      Dear Doctor Franklin

      A Sunday Box

      Notes on the Twenty-first Century

      Ode, Elegy, Aubade, Psalm

      Strange Elegy

      Ephesians

      Vigils

      Ode to a Hawk with Wings Burning

      II.  Foreign Films

      Foreign Film at the Garman Opera House

      The City That Swallowed the Sea

      Foreign Film at the Ritz at the Bourse

      III.  Metropolitan Suite

      Metropolitan Suite

      Circles

      Notes

      Acknowledgments

      About the Author

      Colophon

      FOREWORD

      I want to find the line // where the city becomes the city, / where invention becomes instrument, Ryan Teitman writes, in Litany for the City, a first book muscular with transformation. Invention is Ryan Teitman’s clay—phrase after phrase coins startling newness out of

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