Jun 2335 min read

James Ragan: California Poets Part 7, Five Poems

James Ragan

July 1st, 2024

California Poets: Part VII

James Ragan

Five Poems

The Bond

for a brother remembering war

All day in the Veteran’s ward,

you wonder how the lark will worry

its way to a limb. After all, you say,

even the leaves

are falling to the soft weight of flurries

in the park. Now, you speak of release,

how to free the bond between

flesh and spirit,

how they close in as one, each

to the other, promising at the very moment

when night pre-empts the day,

a profound light

will inspire the miraculous shock

of a mortal comeback, as if death

were simply a day of cancellation,

a day of begging

out from the daily task of breathing,

s’il vu plait—a day of learning back

the trust, that even truth has warts

and wants to hide

from those who confuse it with beauty.

Truth, you say, is beauty to those

who believe all calls to war

that lie within

the sheen of words are polished

to hide the doubt beneath. You laugh

through thoughts that some still think

to be astonishingly true,

as in the need for gods to be imagined,

and that doubters like soldiers burn in hell

once the mind has broken. After all, you say,

consciousness

can prove to be a brittle thing,

but conscience should never be. Now

the lark that visited during the cedar’s

rust in autumn

has returned, trapped behind

the meshed screen out in the snow.

We listen, your talk pressed

against my ear,

stethoscopic, trained to hear bones knock,

to a flutter of wings, something

in the worry of your breath,

dying to be let out.

The Old Roman Platea

The old courtyard, dozing in a riddled mist

of azaleas below the stone stair, has found

the nights in Rome a shade too dark for browsing,

and prefers the regal lit barometer of a torch,

igniting the wet silk of a Tuscan moon

into trellised strips along a rafter grate,

or a jasmine vine curling about the window ledge.

In its time it might have lured da Vinci

in a Gioconda mood, smile-shy, to the haze

and seeming laughter of tumbling ash leaves

or the etched gilding of a stain-glassed sill

flowering tall into Vatican vaults.

When it wakes, it likes to round its shoulders

into each sleeve of a garden wall,

groomed with lavender and blue wisteria,

and leap, like a loitering moon, into a photograph

or a conversation for the rest of a day or year – or century.

For a Mother at the LA Mission

You tell me

there are days

when you’re feeling

soulless,

walking the long hedge

blindly down

the raveled lay of road,

your memory

gasping for breath

to fill

your shivering mind.

And walking on,

you see,

lying in the shadows

of the moonlit pines,

the image

of a transient soul,

whose face you imagine

could possibly mirror

your own,

gazing through the fog

of rotting limbs,

groping the air

to strangle what remains

of a raging

last clear thought.

You fear

that you’re disappearing

through a random

roll of subtractions,

afraid that nothing

your memory allows

in the sundering

of your spirit,

will survive.

Always the dread

of words now rambled

by the false rhyming

of conflicting doubts,

of eyes dissembling

the lovely tryst

of images you see

as children

in the shallows,

dancing, colliding

into an embrace.

You’re holding on

to a ritual

of seeding the mind’s

flowering grave

with moments of light

for an instance

of clarity,

and always the wish

to ease your wanting

to bring a face

back to a name,

or to a place

you can’t remember,

or to a time

you recall

for one brief moment,

that begs

not to be forgotten.

Not Word Enough

for the innocent souls of Uvalde, and

all those lost to us through racist malice

All day, I’ve waited for breath

to climb onto the tongue, not easily,

some might say with a gasping stutter,

sliding down the throat’s ribbed spine

to find the word that refuses to be spoken,

its silence wrapped like shade

in the lung’s bowl of darkness.

What could I know of nuance,

its shape or sound, elusive like the scent

of hatred, neither giving nor forgiving,

how in moments of light, when love

might have gardened the heart,

a life fades amid the dying roots

of breath? I would sooner reach out

to a crow’s beak or climb a steeple

and believe as many do

in the height and point of things,

how in merciful times a syllable’s

utterance of guilt might suffice.

All day I’ve wondered what in time

is too short a time to kneel before

a flowered grave until a death is honored.

What in time is too silent a word

to ban the triggered power that breeds

contempt for a generation’s grief?

For days I’ve wandered, searching

the riddle of letters for any assemblage

of sounds I could justify for an instance

of repentance, for any gift of redemption

I could set free from the depth of world-pity.

In a word, enough is not word enough

to silence the rage sorrowed in this song.

Mowing the Lawn

while hearing news of the siege of Kiev,

I find in the weed-high yard, neighborings

of minor gods, spreaths of all-loving

creatures,

surviving my assault, my brutal loss

of reason, sonar to the brain, as I shear

the half-sheened wings off gypsy moths.

Underground,

an army ant, carrying prey to its colony

bivouac, sprints about omnisciently

in the dark, Now, the mantis, self-adoring

spawn of grass

prays tall for my shifting shears to stall.

I am genius around these parts.

I weed wings from the may-

fly’s skull.

Until the mowed bone of something

brittle rattles still as dice. Until

my Spaniel bares the shank

of his teeth

at my slightest invasion or trespass.

In his jowls the starling I have claimed

to love has been splayed

mercilessly.

By his bark he has lost faith in my ability

to transcend the limits of my nature.

It takes the devil, not genius,

to mow a lawn.

Interview

October 12th, 2024

California Poets Interview Series:

James Ragan, Poet, Playwright, Screenwriter, Educator

interviewed by David Garyan

DG: Let’s begin with your teaching career in the Professional Writing Program at USC—an endeavor which spanned over two decades. The program was noted for its established faculty, strong students, and diverse curriculum. How did teaching in this environment shape your writing and what led to the ultimate closure of the MPW major?

JR: My writing was shaped in my childhood by the principle, that “to be the best, you must surround yourself with the best.” My parents and 12 siblings (6 with college degrees) taught me to follow that goal in every endeavor of my life, ranging from my receiving a Ph.D. at Ohio University, where I studied the most learned literary authors, to Directing the USC Professional Writing Program where I hired distinguished faculty to include Pulitzer, Tony, and five Academy Award winners, while admitting the most talented U.S. and international students into our Graduate Program.

Early in my 25 year Directorship of MPW, I grew our Screenwriting and Fiction tracks to include Playwriting, through hires of Tony winner Jerome Lawrence, Pulitzer winner Paul Zindel, and Rockefeller Award winner Donald Freed. I added Non-fiction, with hirings of Feminists Betty Friedan and Shana Alexander (CBS 60 Minutes), Polk Award recipient Gay Talese, and Grammy winner Shelly Berman. I then created a Poetry track with Shelley Award honoree Ann Stanford, Fin de Millennium winner Holly Prado, and Visiting Lecturers, Nobel winner Seamus Heaney, and Pulitzer winner Henry Taylor. I added to the Fiction faculty, Hubert Selby Jr and National Book Awardee Richard Yates, and Screenwriting with Academy Award winners Harry Brown, Edmund North, Frank Tarloff, Sy Gomberrg, Mel Shavelson, and directors Mark Rydell and Irvin Kershner.

All had achieved distinction, as did their grateful students: Oscar nominees Mark Andrus, Erich Van Lowe, Douglas Day Stewart, Emmy nominee Victor Levin; Fiction authors, Pulitzer nominee Gina Nahai, Guggenheim Fellow Judith Freeman, Pushcart Prize winner Sandra Tsing Loh; Poets, Guggenheim Fellow Charles Harper Webb, NEA winner, Millicent Borges, Academy of American Poets winner Catherine Davidson, and, proudly, my thesis student, Pulitzer winner, Journalist/Poet Tom Curwen. My faculty hirings achieved my goal of “surrounding our students with the best.”

As more proof, our tabulation, in 1997, of student publications numbered 62 novels, 35 Non-Fiction books and journals, 15 books of poetry, numerous produced plays, and the Oscar winning screenplays, An Officer and a Gentleman, As Good As It Gets, and TV’s Emmy winner Mad About You. Additional Award winners include TV’s Star Trek, Murder She Wrote, Room 222, Full House, Different Strokes, In the Heat of the Night, Hill Street Blues, The Witcher, and a host of others as the numbers have grown exponentially since 1997.

As to MPW’S closure, in 2007, having been wooed by competing universities for my role in developing one of the top 3 writing programs in the nation, I accepted Distinguished Professorships at both the U. of Oklahoma and Charles University’s Prague Summer Program. As a result, I decided to retire from USC and was celebrated with a surprise 25th Anniversary Tribute at the Town and Gown Hall, for my decades-long teaching and Directorship of the USC Program. Revered for its national and international literary successes, I received letters of congratulations from Laura and President George W. Bush, Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney, Swedish Consul General Tomas Rosander, Czech U.N. Ambassador Martin Palous, U.S. Ambassador Craig Stapleton, LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Charles U. Dean, Martin Prochazka, and London’s Richmond U. President Walter McCann, among others, and from a multitude of MPW graduates, most appreciatively including my own poetry student, First Daughter Jenna Bush, whom I taught at Charles University.

First daughter, Jenna Bush, student of James Ragan in the Prague Summer Writer’s Program at Charles University with classmates, on Václav Havel’s apartment balcony.

I departed, leaving the international reputation of our faculty and student successes—reflected in the excellent cross-relations we had with all the writing units at USC. My inconsolable sadness is that while I was in Prague teaching, university politics reared its head at USC, and a majority of my faculty chose to follow me in leaving, in response to a competing Dept. who subverted the MPW by politicking for its closure, due to their own envious ambitions to expand. I can’t describe the pain of seeing our 25 year legacy so easily negated by the university to whom my distinguished faculty and I had devoted our faithful allegiance, while turning down lucrative offers over those many years.

DG: Throughout your impressive career you’ve had the great privilege to not only travel, but also work in places like Charles University, Beijing University, and Ljubljana University. To what extent were the classroom dynamics different and to what extent were they similar to the US?

JR: I promoted a dynamic built on my humanist conviction of expanding a “global consciousness” in my students. Having read and often lectured in 32 nations, I taught poetry, playwriting, screenwriting with the same Aristotelian principles that I employed at USC, Caltech, and Oklahoma U. and which guided my summer courses at Charles U., London’s Richmond University, U. of Cork, American College of Greece, and Fulbright Professorships at Ljubljana U. and Beijing U. where I lectured in English to receptive Chinese students. My play Commedia was performed in English in 2008 at Renmin U. and honored in my presence. While I taught American Lit, I included authors from the host countries in my syllabus, thus building on the principle of being a “world citizen,” advancing the need for a global consciousness in all the arts, the key to my life-long teaching approach.

DG: Along with Bob Dylan, Seamus Heaney, and other reputable names you participated in the Moscow International Poetry Festival. More than 8,000 people were present and one of them was Mikhail Gorbachev, no less. Next year will mark the 40th anniversary of that event. How do you feel about the world having taken so many steps back? It seems strange that such an event could take place in 1985 Moscow but not in the Moscow of Putin.

JR: Gorbachev, himself, encouraged the creation of the Int. Moscow Poetry Festival with specific invitations to Western poets as a springboard for his principle of “Glasnost” (transparency), the bedrock of his political reforms of governance called “Perestroika.” My invitation to read arrived in a formal letter from the Soviet Writer’s Union, with esteemed Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko facilitating travel and accommodations.

Surprisingly, all my relatives in the Slovak villages, still under Communist rule in 1985, actually watched me on Soviet-controlled TV as I followed Dylan to read on the Moscow stage. After Dylan’s deserved applause, my relatives were bemused to hear me address the audience in my limited Russian (with a bit of Slovak thrown in) to a generous applause from the Russians, who were caught off-guard and responded appreciatively, “the American is speaking Russian to us!” At the height of the Cold War, this was an anomaly, and the Soviet press swallowed me up for interviews. A New York Times reporter even phoned me to say that the reading was broadcast to 80 million people in Iron Curtain countries at Gorbachev’s direction and was “one of his first forays into Glasnost.”

With the 40th anniversary of that momentous event approaching, it reminds us that we can and must return to the days of “openness” and the promotion of discourse through the arts, in our own politically divided society, and, most importantly, in a vastly polarized world. I have continued to do so, in my acceptance of international reading engagements as a “citizen of the world,” just as we had all represented ourselves on that Moscow stage in 1985, against warnings from our own State Dept. not to attend, since we would be used for propaganda. It didn’t happen.

James Ragan (stage left) preparing to read in English, following his translator, poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko (center) reciting Ragan’s poem in Russian—1985 Moscow Int. Poetry Festival

Members of the American Delegation, (l-r) Studs Terkel, James Ragan, David Halberstam, Harrison Salisbury, Arthur Slessinger and Alfred Kazin were selected to represent the U.S. at the 1990 Moscow American/Soviet Writer’s Conference, entitled “Diffusing the Cold War.”

DG: As a child of Czechoslovakian parents who immigrated to the US, you grew up speaking Slovak before learning English. How did those family dynamics influence your poetic voice and what was your first trip to Slovakia like? Is it true that your books were banned there at the time?

JR: Education was a guiding principle from my parents, Jan and Terezia Ragan, who studied only up to the 2nd grade. I went on to receive not only a Ph.D. at Ohio U. (1971) but also numerous accolades for my poetry including Litt.D's from St. Vincent College (1990) and London's Richmond U. (2001), the Emerson Poetry Prize, NEA Grant, 9 Pushcart Prize nominations, Swan Foundation Humanitarian Award, and Finalist for a Poetry Society of America Award, Walt Whitman Book Prize, & London’s Int. Troubadour Prize, among others documented on my website: jamesragan.com

Growing up speaking Slovak as the twelfth of 13 children, I felt the sting of bigotry at a tender age. As a child of immigrant Slovak parents, I was the target of grade school taunting, the name “dirty hunky” often used as daily derision. Upon learning English, I discovered language as a matter of survival, a weapon more powerful than fighting with fists. This shaped my respect for the power of words and, by extension, the art of poetry as a way of engaging global suffering and prejudice. Growing up in Duquesne PA among disparate immigrant cultures, I never felt “local.” I felt that I existed “in and for the world.” I credit my father, a Slovak farmer turned Pittsburgh steelworker, who loved his violin, and my mother’s artistry as a seamstress as my earliest artistic inspirations.

In truth, the lyrical and rhythmic nature of the Slovak language greatly influenced the “music” in my poetry, that many reviewers have praised, such as Noble Laureate Seamus Heaney in his book attribution, “James Ragan’s poems spare no passion in believing they sing,” or the Publishers Weekly review, “James Ragan continues his song through the centuries in language that echoes Rilke.” It’s an honor to me, that Japan’s Alfa Music recorded the jazz album ALFA in 1977, adapting 10 of my poems to lyrics, sung by vocalist Linda Carriere, formerly of the 70’s pop group Dynasty, and Sony Music has recently re-released the album 47 years later in 2024.

All Song lyrics on Sony’s ALFA album were written by James Ragan. Love Celebration on Kimiko Kasai’s Tokyo Special & Tatsura Yamashita’s later album Go Ahead (1978) also written by Ragan.

My first trip to Slovakia occurred in 1968. After my college graduation I won a govt. grant to intern at Time Magazine, or at a Munich Publishing House. I chose Munich for its close access to visit my parents’ villages of Cernina and Turcovce (near Humenne, Slovakia). During my visit, I could not predict the turmoil of my Uncle Jozef shaking me from sleep, shouting in Slovak, “the Russians have invaded!” I was instantly packed and sitting, sleep-dazed, with my Uncle holding a torch on a buckboard, pulled by one horse, following their dog Bossy, over dark village roads into the night.

We arrived at dawn to a ridge overlooking the train station, and witnessed in shock, a line of Soviet tanks with huge red stars, aiming their barrels down at Humenné. On arrival at the station, my passport, typewriter, and “anti-communist” writings were confiscated by 2 foreign soldiers. I was immediately locked into the train’s bathroom, no matter my Uncle’s ignored protests that I was American and scheduled to catch a flight out of Prague. During my 10 hour lockdown in the bathroom, with the train moving, it became apparent that I was under house arrest. This predicted my future, as my activist writing was banned during the Communist rule for the next 21 years.

I should add that during that same 1968 village visit, a nightly program, In America Today, on the Communist Slovak TV, had broadcast nothing about Czech Prime Minister Alexander Dubcek, whose heroic reformist activism in Prague prompted the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion by the Soviets. That nightly show highlighted such propaganda as “Famine in America” when, in fact, Haiti was the country they were depicting. Such propaganda was spread for years on topics that demeaned America, to counter the growing number of patriots wanting to escape their borders.

To illustrate, one evening in July, 1969, on a hilltop above Cernina, while I celebrated a zivanska (drinking feast) of the U.S. moon landing with my youthful cousins, I pointed to the night sky and proudly proclaimed, “Do you realize that two American astronauts are walking on the moon at this very moment!” My pride was instantly quashed by derisive laughter as they proclaimed, “Cousin Jakub, the Russians landed a man on the moon years ago!” And the propagandist laughter went on for hours, then days, and years, until the country was freed of its Communist bonds and propaganda in 1989. However, nothing has changed regarding Putin, who coordinated state and TV propaganda during that period of his political rise, and who continues his duplicity currently, while we witness daily the powers of Russian propaganda across Europe, and its infiltration into our own news outlets during both the invasion of Ukraine and in our recent presidential elections.

DG: Have you returned to your family villages and, if so, how have things changed?

JR: Yes, I’ve returned numerous times as a result of my Moscow reading for Gorbachev, which placed me on the world stage as an artist with the goal to move the minds of world leaders and their audiences. In 1986, one year after my Moscow reading, I performed with Bulgarian poets to an audience of 6,000 in Sofia’s Palace of Culture for President Todor Zhivkov during the Conference, “Peace the Hope of the Planet,” where I also read poems challenging the Bulgarian government’s role in the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. This trip was the second of many opportunities to read in other countries as well as to visit my relatives in Slovakia.

Additional readings at U.S Embassies in Europe included the following cities: Moscow (1990), Gdansk, Warsaw, & Krakow, Poland (1993), Prague (1994, 1997, 2002, 2003, 2005, 2011, 2013, 2019), Paris (2002, 2003, 2006), Madrid, Spain (2012), Lisbon, Portugal (2012), Bratislava, Slovakia (2013, as well as the culture venues: London’s Richmond University (1994), Edinburgh Festival (2001), Hungarian Writers Union, Budapest (2002), World Congress of Poetry, Slovakia (2002), Writers Union, Estonia (2005), Regents U, England (2013), Charles U, Prague (1994-2020), etc.

James Ragan onstage, reading for Bulgarian President Tudor Zhivkov and an audience of 6,000 at the Palace of Culture during the Conference, “Peace, the Hope of the Planet,” in Sofia, Bulgaria on Oct. 28, 1986.

Reciting at the Polish Embassy in Prague for Ambassador Andrej Krawczyk, July 30, 2003.

In the 2016 Arina Films documentary on my life, Flowers and Roots, which won 15 Film Festival recognitions, including the Houston Int. Film Festival’s Remi Platinum Award, David Hartman, of ABC’s Good Morning America, comments, “Jim Ragan has created relationships with people of authority and power, not only in the U.S. but all over the world. He understands people, human beings.” Poetry Magazine editor John Frederick Nims offered similar praise. “Particularly moving is Ragan’s sympathy with the downtrodden and afflicted. He continues to be something very important in our troubled world: a genuine ambassador of poetry to those who need what he has to give.” In 1987, a year after my reading in Bulgaria, my poem on the Challenger tragedy, “Out of Context,” was judged runner-up for the Poetry Society of America Gertrude Claytor Award.

Years later, I was invited to read for Slovenian President Milan Kučan at the 1996 Vilenica Festival. It was an unexpected honor, that my poem on the homeless, The Tent People of Beverly Hills, first read in Moscow, Sofia, and then Slovenia, was later recorded in 1996 on the Warner Bros. album, A Century of Recorded Poetry, featuring the voices of iconic poets Walt Whitman, Frost, Yeats, Dylan Thomas and others reading their verses. In 2012, The Tent People of Beverly Hills was honored in Amazon’s 100 Great Poems – Classic Poets and Beatnik Freaks, naming it as one of the important poems of the past 100 years.

James Ragan reading during the Vilenica Festival for Slovenian President Milan Kučan at the Karst Caves in Lipicca, Slovenia with translator – Sept. 7, 1996.

Audience at the Karst Caves in Lipicca, including President Milan Kučan, seated 2nd from left.

Sadly, such notoriety carried little weight on my return to Slovakia where nothing had changed. My works were still banned during the Communist occupation, and I was impassioned to expose man’s infinitely evolving state of irrationality. My best descriptions of change were the challenges I endured during my several returns after 1968 and 1969 to the villages. No matter which Czech and Slovak towns I visited, I was required to report my presence to the police authorities. Besides censorship, this was Communism rendering its most insidious power of intimidation.

Years later, while visiting the villages, I was called to the Humenné Library to answer how my book had made its way to their shelves. I had no idea. Perhaps, my cousins had placed it there. A true apparatchik, the young librarian pulled out scissors and brutally cut out my poems on Dubcek, the martyr Jan Palach, and the 1968 Soviet invasion itself, and tossed the pages into the trash, proclaiming, “Now it can remain.” She brashly reshelved the book. I had never witnessed such graphic censorship in my life.

A further example of the dramatic change in Slovak culture and freedoms is best amplified by the current Russian invasion of Ukraine. My aunts, uncles, and cousins, who live in villages 40 miles from the Ukraine border, have taken in war refugees. I’ve been contributing humanitarian aid, including money for food and clothes, to my relatives for the refugees who suffer during this tragic period. I learned to do this in my youth, when I assisted my Mother in sending similar bundles of aid during the Communist occupation and political suppression of Czechoslovakia from 1968-1989.

DG: In your early days you played basketball and also excelled at other sports. Though this was in many ways a pursuit of pleasure, it was also one driven by necessity—the need to win a scholarship in order to pay your way through school. Have sports continued to be a major influence in your life?

JR: I’m fond of saying, “We were so poor, they just forgot to tell us.” Everything was handed down, from books to baseball gloves. It’s true. I played baseball, basketball, and football in high school in order to win a scholarship to college. My Duquesne Little League baseball team had previously placed in the national championships at Williamsport, PA, resulting in my not only being scouted by universities, but by Major League teams. I captained both our baseball and basketball teams in high school and earned an academic/athletic scholarship to Saint Vincent College (BA, 1966) where I studied pre-med and captained our baseball team to a conference title under coach Oland Canterna, former catcher for the Milwaukee Braves. Earning attention of Major League scouts, I turned to education instead, and while writing for the college newspaper, my acceptance of a Govt. grant to work at the Munich publishing house, was a fated influence on my road to writing poetry.

DG: Activism has always been a major component of your life, but especially so in the 60s. And you’ve used those experiences to inform the work you do today. Six years ago, in Sarasota, Florida you read for the Parkland shooting victims. At the March for Our Lives, too, in California you carried a sign from your ‘60s and ‘70s rallies. What are your fondest memories of those times and what do you think of today’s generation fighting for change?

JR: I have great confidence in today’s young generation, based on my own 2 daughters, Tera and Mara and my son Jameson. They inspire my fondest memories by sharing in my artistic and activist vision of a society, built on the same 1960’s values and truths that restored essential freedoms in our nation, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the ending of a divisive Vietnam war. Guided by my activism, and the tutelage of Debora, my wife of 42 years, they support enthusiastically the principles of women’s rights, and social justice for all races and nationalities, that we fought for.

James and daughter Tera, walking the LA Women’s March, with daughter Mara taking the photo.

Guided also by their own university graduate studies, which resulted in Masters degrees for my daughters in literature, cinema, and the Annenberg School of Communication, their world travels with me, as children, allowed them to experience early on, the broader world community of welcoming hearts and minds, which became the solid ground of hope on which to build their futures. Like my daughters, my son shares, through his college education and travels, a belief in the power of communication through the arts, that music specifically instilled in him. So, in similar ways, I carved for them, a path of respect for “communal society” through education and the arts, while honoring their heritage and the heritage of others, that my parents had carved for me.

With the often propagandist disinformation infecting such social media platforms as Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok, my children combat such potential dumbing down of America influences by utilizing the power of book reading and their own insightful poetry, art, and music. My son, an avid pianist, at 18 was an award-winning composer of the score for the documentary Flowers and Roots.

In protests like the “March for Our Lives,” my daughters walked with me, sharing in the hope of a better future, as inspired by the sign I created, “Be Aware, and Be There.” It’s been copied by others in university marches calling for society to educate itself on all its polarizing issues.

My children believe, as I do, that an artist has a moral responsibility to engage the global society, and oneself, on issues of the day, and to reflect the temper of the times. The artist must prick the conscience of society and engage the powers of a larger world outside the self. He or she must afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted, to borrow the Pulitzer ideal.

DG: Apart from Gorbachev, you’ve also read for seven other heads of state. How where these readings similar and how where they different from other poetry events in your career? Did the poems have to be approved in advance?

JR: In addition to 22 Ambassadors, other Heads of State, besides Gorbachev, for whom I’ve read, there have also been Todor Zhivkov (Bulgaria), Milan Kučan (Slovenia), George W. Bush (U.S.), Vaclav Klaus (Czech Rep.), Dr. Young-Hoon Kang (South Korea), Tung Chee-Hwa (Governor of Hong Kong); in addition, I've had the honor of reading with Arthur Miller—for Czech President Václav Havel—who introduced me as an “Ambassador of the Arts” at Prague’s 1994 World PEN Congress. I’ve since devoted my life to earning that honor.

James Ragan reading with Playwright Arthur Miller (right) for Czech President Václav Havel at the Prague World PEN Congress at Charles University. Host Martin Hilsky (center), 11/10/94.

Czech President Václav Havel and James Ragan

In a 2009 interview on OETA TV PBS, host Teresa Miller reflected, “you’ve read for 7 Heads of State. You’re universally recognized as a literary ambassador. Your poetry crosses borders.” That title transformed me, but not in the traditional sense the transformation was more so the realization of what I had already been—my poetry always represented the crossing of borders, time, and language, whether at Carnegie Hall, the U.N., or on stages to foreign Heads of State. Each were different in my choice of poems and in the ceremony attending each reading. In some cases, the President or Prime Minister presented a memorial gift before or after the performance, had photos taken, and escorted me afterwards to join dinner guests. In one case, President Havel, a friend, took me out for drinks.

Incidentally, my readings were only different in my successful or sometimes failed attempts to speak salutations to audiences in their native language as my tribute to each respective nation. Owing to my own bi-lingual background, I believe that honoring an attempt to learn a foreign language opens the passage to a heart and mind. This was most true when I agreed to teach screenwriting for actor Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute during his international outreach to such cities as Budapest, Prague, and Bratislava. I’ll treasure forever the hugs I received from former students, Zuzana Liova and Marko Skop, after each had won the top prizes at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival for films written during their studies with me in Budapest.

As for advanced approval, my poems never had to be approved for my readings for the Heads of State. On the contrary, in several instances, a signed personal copy of my poem about 9/11, “On Liberty and Church Streets in Lower Manhattan” had been requested. For example, after reading it for the Bush family at Kennebunkport, in launching the ongoing Memorial Luncheon honoring the victims of the N.Y. 9 /11 terrorist attack, which First Lady Laura Bush attends, organizers have the poem placed on the tables of guests attending the luncheon. Also, yearly on Sept. 11th, several high schools in the U.S. such as Latrobe H.S. in Pennsylvania, have taught the poem in their classrooms.

My poem, “The Tent People of Beverly Hills,” about the homeless, reached similar acclaim, when it appeared in Amazon's100 Great Poems, resulting in classroom interest. Bob Dylan also asked me to present a copy of the poem to his son Jakob as a birthday gift, which I also read to him, when we celebrated his birthday during his visit to Moscow in 1985 to join his father.

DG: Let’s talk about your activities in film and I’d like to discuss screenwriting specifically. What were the projects you enjoyed working on the most and do you see any parallels between poetry and writing for the screen?

JR: In 1971, while completing my Ph.D. in English Literature and Poetry at Ohio University, I had the great fortune of winning 2 poetry prizes and seeing my play The Landlord produced at Ohio University, before being staged in New York, and later in Los Angeles at the Counterpoint Theater with the play’s title changed to Saints. The reason being that a film named The Landlord was made, and in theaters, leading everyone to believe it was based on my play. It was not. However, it was my Ph.D. and success in theater and poetry that impressed producer Albert S. Ruddy to invite me to work as a Production Asst. during the completion of The Godfather at Paramount where he utilized me as a script reader of the myriads of screenplays mailed to his office. Al was proud of introducing me to anyone who visited, with the phrase, “we have a Poet AND a Ph.D. in our office.” While visiting Al, actor Robert Mitchum, an avid book reader, sat me down to discuss F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Last Tycoon, the film in which he was starring on the Paramount lot.

As a result, the one project, on which I enjoyed working the most, besides the Oscar winner, The Godfather, was the original screenplay of my first film, Voyager. It was my success in drama and poetry that impressed Al enough to send me to London to write the adaptation of the Max Frisch novel Homo Faber with its title changed to Voyager. It taught me patience, as it stars Sam Shepard and Julie Delpy and was directed 12 years later in 1991 by Volker Schlöndorff, the Academy Award director of The Tin Drum. It was Al’s belief in me and his nurturing friendship that catapulted me into the film industry. Even as I continued to write and publish 10 books of poetry, I continued my teaching and work in films as a Story Consultant on such films as Oscar winner The Deer Hunter, starring Robert De Niro and Meryl Streep, The Border, starring Jack Nicholson, and as Script Editor on the Czech film Havel in 2020, awarded numerous honors.

All the parallels of implementing poetry’s power of visual imagery served me well, not only in scene creation but in dialogue, augmented by a sense of dramatic structure, gained from my playwriting, which thrived on poetic dialogue as in my 2nd play Commedia, produced by actor Raymond Burr. My role as a Script Consultant continued on such award-winning foreign films as Dom, Balkan Island, and Clownwise. I also worked as Post-production Coordinator on the Academy Award nominated Short Live-action film Number One. I’m currently Co-Writer/ Co-Producer on the Irish film The Rising, which is in development, and based on the famous 1916 Easter Rebellion in Dublin. Again, the website (jamesragan.com) has further information on it.

DG: You’ve worked on the set of Hollywood movies but have also collaborated with European filmmakers. What are things that attracted you most about US filmmaking and what appeals most from the European approach? Are there things both sides can learn from each other?

JR: Absolutely, both sides can learn from each other. To illustrate, over the years, I’ve been elected President of the Jury for 5 international film festivals, from the Greenwich Int. Film Festival to the 15th Bratislava Int. Film Festival. But the one that stood out was the Trenčín Int. Film Festival in Slovakia, because when the 3 judges first convened, I was met with opposition by the French judge who railed against me as yet, another American influencing the Jury. I already decided not to seek the Jury presidency, because while the other judges are partying on Award Night after 2 weeks of films, the Jury President is hamstrung with writing all the salutations for the Award presentations. His argument was that American action and comic book films were occupying all the theaters in France, thus displacing French films on the screens. A fair point. So, I took him to gentle task.

I said, if French filmmakers, while keeping their cinematic values of presenting “stories of substance” through the lens of cultural sociology, could master such current technological advancements of special effects in American cinema as CGI (Computer Generated Images), and conversely, if American filmmakers could return from “violence motivated action films” to what French films have taught us, that is, “story depth of character and conflict,” then the French could have more audiences in their seats. The French Jurist immediately pounded the table, announcing to the others, “I nominate James Ragan as President of the Jury!” I was approved unanimously, thus granting me the one thing I did not want, that is, the Presidency of the Jury, costing me a seat at the party. The upside was that, as Jury President, I had the honor to give the Festival’s Lifetime Achievement Award to French Actress Catherine Deneuve onstage to rousing audience applause.

James Ragan Presenting French Actress Catherine Deneuve with a “Lifetime Achievement of Excellence in Film” Award with Festival President Peter Hledík at the Trenčín Int. Film Festival, June 30, 2000.

DG: In 1981 you took on the role of director and went to El Paso to shoot a film. The experience was not an easy one to say the least. What difficulties did you encounter?

JR: The important thing is that I got the film done. An El Paso Times headline announced, No One Prepared Director for El Paso which was correctly reported, since Mexican youth across the Rio Grande kept waving their arms and dancing in order to ruin our camera shots, which they did, while I was directing the film Exile for TV. I solved the situation by having my AD cross the river and bring them over to be in the scene, which resolved the delays. My experience landed me a consulting role to Director Tony Richardson who, shortly after, arrived in El Paso to shoot the film The Border starring Jack Nicolson. I played a strategic role in saving his film time and money.

Like Richardson, I had a scene to be shot on the Bridge of the Americas, spanning the Rio Grande to Mexico. But on the morning of shooting, authorities reclaimed our permit. On the verge of doom, I wisely sent my AD upriver to find a bridge spanning Texas and New Mexico, which he did, and we continued shooting our film, albeit delayed. I was, thus, able to warn Richardson to be prepared with an alternate bridge, because the city authorities might pull the same tactic on him. He wisely scouted a bridge site in Laredo as a fallback, and as predicted, the authorities cancelled his permit. I stayed on his film as a Casting Consultant, and negotiated my AD to an Assistant role on his film.

DG: If you could no longer live in the US, what country would you choose to settle in?

JR: I’d choose to live in Prague, Czech Republic, where Poet-Playwright President Václav Havel persuaded me as a fellow activist to teach as Distinguished Professor of Poetry and Screenwriting, during the Summer Sessions at Charles University.

James Ragan on Havel's balcony in Prague

I assumed this title for 25 summers while continuing my duties at USC. He and his brother Ivan provided his former apartment in their family home as a residency for myself and my family. During that period, I wrote 6 books of poetry, 2 plays, and 2 films on Havel’s balcony overlooking the Vltava River with a view of Hradčany Castle where Havel took up residence as President of the Czech Republic. The inspiration was dramatic for its iconic views. In addition, Prague provides easy travel to neighboring Slovakia.

DG: If you could appoint any poet to be president of the US, who would you choose?

JR: It would have been Czech poet/dramatist Václav Havel, or Slovenia’s Poet/President Milan Kučan, or Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney, Richard Wilbur, Lucille Clifton, or Jean Valentine. I need to think more on possible current poets.

DG: Apart from Gorbachev, who loved poetry, do you know if any other politicians you’ve met had ever tried to write a poem?

JR: Czech President Václav Havel, responsible for initiating my Poetry Professorship at Charles University, began his career as a poet and playwright. As a friend, we often exchanged views on poetry and our roles as dissident protestors during the Communist occupation of Czechoslovakia, for which he spent 4 years in prison, and where he wrote his famed Letters to Olga. On one occasion, at my request, he sent me one of the letters to Olga, whom I had met several times, so that I could read it on the anniversary of the Velvet Revolution at the Czech Institute in Los Angeles.

With my books also banned from the 1970’s until 1989, Havel had me translate several of his poems into English. In 2002, he accepted an invitation to speak at the Los Angeles Museum of Tolerance, but, unfortunately, suddenly fell ill. He sent his wife, a former actress, First Lady Dagmar Havlova, whom he married after Olga’s passing, to join me in representing him. She read my translation of his poem “September Sunday” in Czech, after which I read it in English. I was honored to play a key role in what proved to be her inspiring performance of his poem.

Former President George W. Bush, and his wife Laura are also lovers of poetry, as is their daughter Jenna, who studied poetry with me for a summer semester at Prague's Charles U. She was an inspiringly talented writer, and poet, who has since, published her work, and currently hosts NBC’s Today Morning show. Please read the origin of the poem "On Liberty and Church Streets in Lower Manhattan" (below) which after my reading of it at Kennebunkport, received a White House commendation from Laura and President George W. Bush on the 1st Memorial Anniversary of 9/11. The following appeared in the USC Campus News.

“On Liberty and Church Streets in Lower Manhattan” by James Ragan

In 2002 poet and playwright James Ragan, Director of the Graduate Professional Writing Program at the University of Southern California, was asked by USC’s President Steven Sample to compose a poem for the first year anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 attack on New York’s World Trade Center. Declining an honorarium, Ragan flew to New York to witness, first hand, the ashen grounds of the fallen Twin Towers and composed the poem “On Liberty and Church Streets in Lower Manhattan,” which he subsequently recited at the 2002 memorial observance for an audience of 2,000 people at USC’s McCarthy Quad. It was later presented to the U.S. Ambassador to the Czech Republic Craig Stapleton and his wife Debbie, who forwarded the poem to First Lady Laura Bush. The First Lady graciously extended a White House Commendation to Ragan and forwarded the poem to several family members of 9/11 victims and U.S. Embassies. The poem has, since 2003, been read at numerous official commemorations, including the annual 9/11 Commission dinner which NYC Mayors and UN dignitaries attend each year. (USC News)

On Liberty and Church Streets in Lower Manhattan

for the 3,025 dead, how I listen to their absence.

Long after nightfall crawls beyond the Park Street pier

where the rain drift of ash now tints the asphalt,

and where at dawn the long rope of sunlight

no longer swings from one tall wall to another,

a moon rides up the light’s twin beams

to where the shore has called the memory to harbor,

and while there are no lawns of campion, larch, or yarrow,

no flowerings to root, no words to borrow

back the long deep breath of a city’s soft wind whistle,

those who first heard the sun’s laughter in the skylight stutter

then stop to let the world go dark—all who wondered,

thinking of the goodness in themselves, and the godness,

will not remember how they stared shock-still,

at something heaved out of the sky, white

as the sun exploding or the lambent shears of lightning

that ripped the chaos of illusion from their eyes.

For months I could not walk to see the steel crane spooning forth

the bones’ debris against the moon’s translucence.

I could not hear the voices in the buried fire candle up

to be extinguished. I could not listen to their absence.

Once along the streets of Liberty and Church,

I saw the girder’s grid of steel leaning out

like a meshed screen sculpture,

to where the digging must have wanted union

with the souls’ debris in some communal citizenry of sky.

If I could join their flight, I would be a citizen of the leaves

and fall greening skyward, lean as the stems of stars.

I would be a citizen of water if I could bathe

each window’s reflection of the ground grave below

with the image of a thousand repeating spires.

I would be a citizen of air to watch the wind’s breath settle,

if I could spare the flights of souls

their pluraled fall onto the spears of metal.

But I have taken the lean bridge to darkness,

walked like a thigh-stilted spoonbill

across the knuckle bones of faith

to cross a world of centuried indifference,

and I have searched the avenues of alphabets

to exorcise a concept, as if the word, zero,

nullifies the sanctity of souls and the ground they inhabit.

And while I have watched the floating crush of a tower’s will,

and seen, from Washington to Pennsylvania fields,

how with the future there comes a birthing

of remembrance so profound the voices rise

like crofts of swallows in a riot of flight.

If I could seed these words into the language of choirs,

I would be a citizen of the earth and crawl the moon’s lit path

to join a universe of hands in weeding out all boundaries.

I would roil the lamps on all the curbs of Manhattan,

to light the streets we cross, at Church and Liberty,

on whose ground I find my peace, a footing I could not learn or teach

until I listened to their absence, and feared the loss of each.

Reading the poem for Ambassador to France Craig Stapleton at the US Embassy, Paris, 2006.

Upper and lower images: James Ragan reading to an audience of 2,000 at McCarthy Quad at USC, 9/11/02.

DG: In closing, I would like to ask what you're working on and if there's anything else you'd like to share?

JR: First, let me say that on my arrival in LA in the early 1970’s, I became a small bolt in the large wheel of good fortune that poetry gave me in order to join in the life of Theater and Film in this sprawling town of millions. During the past 4 years of Covid, I’ve worked diligently on 2 new books of poetry, Nothing Disappears and Howling at the Moon with a 3rd book, Selected Poetry: To Sing Us Out of Silence, to be sent to publishers, soon. I’m also compiling a book of my published essays as I await word on a possible future LA (and London) production of my play Commedia.

Additionally, I had completed a new screenplay with the director Kevin McCann for the film The Rising, based on the famous 1916 Easter Sunday Rebellion in Dublin. It was to begin shooting in 2021 in Dublin with the proposed cast of Liam Neeson, Fiona Shaw, Colin Morgan, David O’Hara and Liam Neeson’s son Michael, but Covid intervened, putting the cast and production on hold. As co-writer/co-producer of the film, I’m hopeful to join in a U.S. co-production to build on the original financial investment from the North and South Irish Film Commissions.

As I reflected in the Arina Films documentary on my life, Flowers and Roots, An Ambassador of the Arts, broadcast by PBS in 2017 on Pittsburgh’s WQED, playwriting like film, took on an additional force for me. It became something I could use to change my society, to heal that society because it was broken, quite broken. So, I always look to the artist whether the painter, the musician, the poet, novelist, filmmaker, or playwright to be the necessary voice at a time when we need to share their sensitivities and passions for truth.

“James Ragan is one of the most brilliantly creative talents in American letters today, a rare combination of poet, playwright, and ambassador of the arts.” —Tony & Peabody Award winning playwright, Jerome Lawrence

“It is James Ragan’s eloquence and scholarship which attract all. Yes, he is an internationally celebrated poet. Yes, it is known that he’s one of America’s most likely candidates for Poet Laureate and the great World prizes. His drama like his poetry is profound, reflecting the extraordinary terrain of his heart” —Pulitzer Prize Winning Playwright, Paul Zindel

(Moscow and Beijing Production Photos Follow Below)

Moscow Production of James Ragan’s play, Commedia, at Theater Russakov,

Starring Anatoly Elizarov, famed mime artist and student of Marcel Marceau.

Author’s Note:

The play Commedia was originally produced by American actor Raymond Burr (TV’s Perry Mason) at the Sonoma State University Theater on Feb. 2, 1984 with later productions in Moscow (1986, 2008), Athens (2008), and Beijing (2008), among others. The play is a contemporary commedia dell’arte, based on a 16th Century art form which relies on improvisation and an impromptu action called the lazzo. Lazzis are the tools of each actor’s imagination, and should be generously encouraged, allowing for as much boldness of action, bawdy innuendo, and self-indulgent virtuosity, as can be laughingly endured. The setting should be spartan with minimal props and staging. At both Sonoma State University and St. Vincent College (Pittsburgh, 2012), masks were used. In Beijing, they were not, which proved engaging. If used, the lower face is exaggerated to amplify such farcical stereotypes as the miser, lawyer, or the vainglorious pedant.

At Sonoma State, because of its abundance of theater novitiates, the “live curtain” was used. Elsewhere it was not. Commedia dell’arte also allows for ancillary characters to evolve such as dancers, acrobats, shadows, and mimes as in Anatoly Elizarov’s Moscow production. In each production, it was encouraged that principle character and place names be changed to reflect the local and national identities. In all productions, actors performed multiple roles (i.e. the characters Bolley and Pansy doubled as Vine Stalks). Love, lust, avarice, and deceit, back-dropped against the contemporary contexts of political, class, and cultural barriers are the timeless themes, and the modern world of fated absurdity, the stage.

The playbill depicts the Moscow productions of "Commedia" in 1987 & 2008 Jubilee performance by Anatoly Elizarov, famed mime artist and student of Marcel Marceau.

Thematic Notes on Commedia or Ardor Under the Arbor

The play has a poetically satirical edge as it explores the humorous rantings of two wine families (reminiscent of the Mondavi Brothers) feuding over the water rights to their Napa Valley vineyards (one a buffoon of a corporation lawyer has the water, the other, a miserly winegrower doesn’t). Consequently, a wall is built and a border, formed. In order to bring the wall down, a deal, brokered at the expense of their inheritors, results in the mercenary bartering of land for the promise of marriage to an unwilling bride. Their follies are narrated by the spirit of imagination, rendered in human form as the Magician. Characters are named after wines, Zinfandel (Zin), Pinot Noir (Pin), Petite Sirah along with the joker, Harley Quinn.

Greed and the excesses of power reduce both families to comical confrontations and the land to near extinction. A satire of man’s propensity for creating personal and sovereign borders, the play resonates with universal qualities—power, corruption, redemption, all echoes of a past, calling up the Cold War period, still salting our current nationalistic times with greed, when countries are warring over shifts in their political, economic, and cultural landscapes.

Reviews of Commedia or Ardor Under the Arbor

“Rooted, centuries old in Italian squares and marketplaces, Commedia or Ardor Under the Arbor, under the impressive talents of producer Raymond Burr and playwright James Ragan is a raucous wedding feast of improvisation...dancing, singing, juggling, tumbling, mugging, boisterous rollicking, miming, and the most enjoyable theater imaginable.

—The Times (Sonoma, CA) 3/15/84

Commedia: Burr's Ardor Extraordinary

When you walk into the auditorium and see a man juggling a basketball, a tennis ball, and rubber chicken, you know you’re not going to see any ordinary play. Conceived by actor Raymond Burr and written by poet- playwright James Ragan, this theatrical experiment is consistently interesting and entertaining, combining a Sonoma County setting with commedia dell’arte, a style of Italian Renaissance street theater that relies on stock characters, identifiable by their gestures, costumes, and masks. The complicated plot would keep TV’s Knot’s Landing going for three months.

—Santa Rosa Press Democrat, 2/5/84

IN CONCLUSION: WHY I WRITE by JAMES RAGAN

I wanted to “live” poetry rather than just write it. That was the impulse that took me out into the world. I write to break down borders. My sensibility has always been global, to find expression through my poetry, plays, and films to bring individuals and worlds seemingly apart, closer in understanding. The cafes I write in, are my libraries—from Paris to Prague to New York to Los Angeles. I write to live out loud, and through the expansive reach of art, hope to achieve community through a common language.

Meeting with the Samarkand Cultural Community after reading for them in Uzbekistan, 2007

Speaker at the Soviet-American Conference, “Defusing the Cold War,” Moscow 1990

At Dublin’s Bewley’s Café, sharing wine with old friend, Seamus Heaney, while celebrating his 1995 Nobel Prize and reminiscing about our 1985 performance together at the Moscow Int. Poetry Festival during Glasnost. What followed from Moscow, resulted in my reading in 32 nations, including the Iron Curtain Countries of Bulgaria, Uzbekistan, Georgia, Hungary, Poland, Estonia, Slovenia, Serbia, Croatia, Czech Republic and my parents’ native Slovakia.

Being honored with the Nobel was, for Seamus, a result of his unwavering belief in “hope,” a universal ideal we both shared in common in our classrooms and our tours of the world. In his words, “Even if the hopes you started out with are dashed, hope has to be maintained.”

That sharing of a common language of hope was never more realized, universally, than on the day I was invited to read my poem “The Astronaut” for the Apollo-Soyuz Mission Astronauts on their 15th Anniversary celebration at the USC Science Museum during July 20-23, 1990. A copy of my poem “The Astronaut,” appears below, signed by Apollo-Soyuz Astronauts, Tom Stafford, Deke Slayton, Vance Brand, Russians Alexei Leonov Valery Kubasov, and guest Wally Schirra. Truly, these astronauts inspired the world with hope for universal shared peace and brotherhood.

Author Bio:

Appearing in 36 anthologies and 15 languages, James Ragan is an internationally recognized author of 12 books of poetry, including The Hunger Wall and Chanter’s Reed, and 2 plays staged in the U.S, Moscow, Beijing, Athens etc. With poems in Poetry, The Nation, Los Angeles Times, World Lit Today, and readings in 34 nations, he has performed for the U.N. Carnegie Hall, CNN, NPR, PBS, BBC and 7 Heads of State including Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985 (with Bob Dylan). Honors: 2 Litt.D’s, 2 Fulbright Grants, Emerson Poetry Prize, NEA, 9 Pushcart nominations, Swan Foundation Humanitarian Award, a Poetry Society of America citation, Bucharest Film Festival’s “Contribution to the Arts” Award. Finalist: Walt Whitman Book Award, Ohio Book Award, London’s Troubadour Int. Poetry Prize, etc. He’s the subject of the Arina Films documentary, Flowers and Roots, awarded 17 Film Festival Recognitions, and Platinum Prize at Houston’s Int. Film Festival. He Directed USC’s Professional Writing Program (25 yrs) and is Dist. Professor at Prague’s Charles U. (24 summers). President Václav Havel honored him as “Ambassador of the Arts” at Prague’s 1994 World PEN Congress.