Document Type
Book
Publication Date
1996
Abstract
The new world, the new times, the new peoples, the new vistas, need a tongue according . . .
—Walt Whitman
Richard Louis Ronan was a poet, playwright, and ikebana flower designer who lived in San Francisco with his partner, Bill Pittman, during the 1980s. He died of AIDS in 1989 at age 43, having produced six collections of poetry, seven plays, and several unpublished manuscripts. He received not only a Dodge Foundation Grant to teach poetry but also, while studying at Berkeley, the Emily Cook and Eisner Prizes. His versatility did not prevent him from excelling in several poetic forms: he wrote one of the strongest collections of narrative poetry published this half of the century, and the tension of his warring Zen and Catholic sensibilities gave life to an extraordinary lyric-dramatic poetry of the body.
Recommended Citation
VanStavern, Jan. Richard Ronan. Boise, ID: Boise State University, 1996. Digital. Western Writers Series, 124.