Profile Poem by Elizabeth Anne Martina Ryan

"I started out with a frayed and urgent lyric
I suppose it was a comparative poverty
then learning appealed to me, though the past scared
then the Orpheus poems
a sort of self-commentary
You'll see in my second book how I've
tackled national themes
My spoken word CD
was the people's voice for a while
Later I was avant-garde
You can read the accompanying text's
explication of process

And now, to seem
Priests gather at the table
and swim in the pages of my future
to a world I've barely crept on
The greats I keep at a distance,
fervid for those overlooked by history
to hope perhaps someone attends my book
They crown me with reward"