Litany for the City

Ryan Teitman: Ryan Teitman was born in Philadelphia and is a Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford University. He received his BA from Penn State University and worked as a newspaper reporter in and around Philadelphia before receiving an MFA and MA from Indiana University. His poems have appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Mid-American Review, Ninth Letter, Sycamore Review, and Washington Square, among other publications. He currently lives in Berkeley, California.

"In many ways this is a book of devotion, a set of prayers to a world that is both ugly and beautiful--full of sorrow, joy and the bizarre...a powerful first collection by a very promising new writer--successfully announcing what will hopefully be a long-lasting presence in contemporary poetry." --Mary: A Journal of New Writing "Things are changed by how they are used. Even the hot breath of a resolute sigh, trapped under a blanket at the moment of waking transforms into a 'coat of warmth / that I knew could / never fray.'" --Southern Indiana Review "Litany for the City embodies the scope and complexity of an urban setting, as well as the emotive depth and wonder it is to be human. In the end, it is only this muddled and luscious reside of experience with its form fading into fume that one is left with, and Teitman proves it is more than enough." --Todd McCarty, Gently Read Literature "Teitman maps the way only a poet can map, sketching in then blurring out the borders between inner and outer with each line. It is the poetic act of noticing that finds cathedrals everywhere. And language, repetition, is what holds it all together ... This book has a heart that goes beyond the strength of its crafting or imagery. It reminds us of what only poetry can do."-The Rumpus

• Foreword by Jane HirshfieldAcknowledgements 2Little Litany 4I. Litany for the City 5 Philadelphia, 1976 6Vespers 8The Cabinet of Things Swallowed 11Dear Doctor Franklin13Hard Light through Hemlock 15Ars Poetica 18Dear Doctor Franklin 21The City that Swallowed the Sea 23Cathedrals 25Dear Doctor Franklin 27A Sunday Box 30Notes on the Twenty-first Century 31Ode, Elegy, Aubade, Psalm 33Strange Elegy 35Ephesians 37Vigils 38Ode to a Hawk with Wings Burning 41II. Foreign Films 44Foreign Film at the Garman Opera House 45Cinéma Vérité47Foreign Film at the Ritz at the Bourse 49III. Metropolitan Suite 51