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    • May 2013

    David Caplan, Linda Gregerson, Derek Sheffield, A. E. Stallings, Michelle Boisseau, Peter Cole, and more.

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What a fuckup you are.   

What dumbshit you do.   

Your father's voice   

still whispers in you,   

   

despite the joys   

that sweeten each day.   

Your Genius it isn't   

until, dying away,   

   

it worms back through   

the sparkling dream   

where you drown him   

in an inch-deep stream:   

   

your knee in his back,   

your strength on his skull,   

it begins singing   

praise for your skill.

Michael Ryan, “Tutelary” from New and Selected Poems. Copyright © 2004 by Michael Ryan. Used by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

Source: Poetry (April 2004).

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MORE FROM THIS ISSUE

This poem originally appeared in the April 2004 issue of Poetry magazine

View this poem in its original format

• Sisyphus
  by A. E. Stallings
• Needle
  by Kay Ryan
• Drinking Song
  by A. E. Stallings

• April 2004 Table of Contents
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More about this poem

Biography

Poet and memoirist Michael Ryan was born in St Louis, Missouri. He studied at the University of Notre Dame and Claremont Graduate School, and earned an MFA and PhD from the University of Iowa. Ryan’s first volume, Threats Instead of Trees (1974), won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award. His second collection, In Winter (1981), was selected by Louise Glück for the National Poetry Series. God Hunger (1989) won the Lenore . . .

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Poems by Michael Ryan

• A Posthumous Poetics
• Against Which
• Dickhead
• Girls’ Middle School Orchestra
• Hard Times

• More poems by Michael Ryan (15 poems)
  • I Had A Tapeworm
  • In Winter
  • Larkinesque
  • Letters from an Institution
  • Prothalamion
  • Switchblade
  • The Ditch
  • The Others
  • The Use of Poetry
  • Where I’ll Be Good

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Poem Categorization

SUBJECT Family & Ancestors, Living, Disappointment & Failure, Relationships

Poetic Terms Rhymed Stanza

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