Arizona SB 1070:
An Act
Downstate Legacies, 2021
This book is an innovative “homophonic translation” that critiques and rescripts the racist, xenophobic bill: Arizona SB1070. The translated poems cross the borders of political and legislative discourse to create a lyrical grammar of compassion and solidarity. Throughout, Ryan Clark repudiates and repairs the harmful language of this cruel nation.
-Craig Santos Perez
How I Pitched
the First Curve
Lit Fest Press, 2019 (out of print)
I’m ashamed to say the following in blurb, because this isn’t hyperbole and is thus inappropriate for the genre, but this is truly one of the most exquisite books I’ve ever read. Where most homophonic translations are whimsical, comic, madcap, anomic, and, frankly, purposeless, Clark’s here are not. Examining the monstrous within our personal and communal lives, this book is not merely linguistically ingenious, it is emotionally moving, poignant, and psychologically insightful, and it rolls out of the alphabet with a shocking political and ethical force. Ryan Clark is a masterful poet.
-Gabriel Gudding
And Bring My Developing Hands
Con/Crescent Press, 2008 (out of print)
Explore that
as a practice,
movement towards risk:
others
or non-others.
This is uh a fragment
of the fragments.
–from “o Look at Uh”
Ryan Clark 