Jason Ryberg

Jason Ryberg is currently listening to an old transistor radioplay nothing but sad songs in a room that rents for $20 / hour, in a motel (owned by the sheriff's brother-in-law, they say) outby the highway on just another hot and nasty Saturday night, just outside of just another Damned If I Know, USA. Everynow and then a truck or car or bus speeds by. Every now andthen a star falls. Most of the time there's never any trouble. John Dorsey lived for several years in Toledo, Ohio. He is the author of several collections of poetry, including Teaching the Dead to Sing: The Outlaw's Prayer (Rose of Sharon Press, 2006), Sodomy is a City in New Jersey (American Mettle Books, 2010), Tombstone Factory, (Epic Rites Press, 2013), Appalachian Frankenstein (GTK Press, 2015) Being the Fire (Tangerine Press, 2016) and Shoot the Messenger (Red Flag Poetry, 2017), Your Daughter's Country (Blue Horse Press, 2019), and Which Way to the River: Selected Poems 2016-2020 (OAC Books, 2020). His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and the Stanley Hanks Memorial Poetry Prize. He was the winner of the 2019 Terri Award given out at the Poetry Rendezvous. He may be reached at [email protected]. Victor Clevenger spends his days in a Madhouse and his nightswriting. Selected pieces of his work have appeared in printmagazines and journals around the world; it has also beennominated for the Best of the Net Anthology and the Pushcart Prize. He is the author of several collections of poetry including Sandpaper Lovin'(Crisis Chronicles Press, 2017), A Finger in the Hornets' Nest (Red Flag Poetry, 2018), Corned Beef Hash By Candlelight (Luchador Press, 2019), A Wildflower In Blood(Roaring Junior Press, 2020), and Mourning Eyes (Between Shadows Press, 2021). Together with American poet John Dorsey, they run River Dog. He can be reached at: [email protected]

Jason Ryberg writes true. There is no falseness in his poetry, and that's about as big of a compliment as I can give. In this collection, you'll find excellent poem after excellent poem. Street poet? Working class poet? Ryberg is all of these and more. His words sing and howl. They are accessible in the best possible way. I'm delighted to see so much of his work together in one book. Don't pass this one up.-Daniel Crocker, LeadwoodDashiell Hammett, Hedy Lamar, and a dragonfly, enter a dimly lit saloon Benoit Mandelbrot is behind the bar and Tom Waits is on the juke, literally. If they are in Kansas or Missouri it's too late to turn back you are in a Jason Ryberg poem. Part ghost story, part farmer's almanac entry, all riverbank reeds and cautionary tale made myth. Ryberg's poems reek with Bo Diddley envy and the mud of a well-grounded poem mixed in a mad scientist's autoclave. In short, Dear Reader, wait for the moon and the ice cubes to crack, open a book and so will you.- Paul Konieckiauthor of After Working Hours (NightBallet Press 2017) Jason Ryberg's full-scale poetry collection sprawls across pages so comfortably you may forget you are reading. The poet's voice is so natural that his conversational comments, mostly iambic, connect and expand like a well-aged, single malt scotch. Enjoy.-Denise Low, 2007-2009 Kansas Poet Laureate Jason Ryberg's poetry is an aperture into what punk rock country, old blues bookstores and jazz back roads becomes under the skillful strumming of a man who knows how to listen to the heron and the hero both. His work walks through existential dread and into laughing amazement without ever leaving the reader behind. Ryberg is the essential Kansas poet: he takes the flat plains of the page and blasts tornadoes, heartbreak, thunderstorms, and true stories across the big open empty until we are all filled with the rush of the view through the rear-view mirror. -Jeanette Powers, Stubborn Mule Press

"Jason Ryberg's poems ought to be tackled in front of a plate of runny eggs and hashbrowns, late night in some greasy spoon diner where you can still smoke cigarettes, where truck drivers and salesmen with briefcases full of drugs and lewd secrets and the murderers from Capote's In Cold Blood all might stop to eat on the same night, under a moon "like the atomically radiant skull / of a bald and diabolical clown." His books should come pre-worn, covers already tattered and stained with unidentified life fluids, favorite pages scribbled on and half-loosed from the binding. Each of Ryberg's lines should be read in a gargle-y, Tom Waitsian rumble that embodies the boogeymen that hide inside his images. Folks, this stuff is weird, wild. And even better, this stuff is good."-Justin Hamm,

Reading Ryberg is like driving a pick-up truck across Kansas on shrooms. Jason Ryberg's imagery, as fresh as a midnight S curve, takes the reader on a journey from the city to the wheat fields through a landscape bright with the " five-battery- ashlight of a moon." Forever the Salina cowboy at heart, Ryberg, like a calf roper, lassos the "quicksilver halo of ghost fire", moments deep, spirit-filled with paradox. The poet carries his piggin' string in his teeth, ready to half-hitch a "pint bottle...to the grinning, /blue Buddha moon." He raises both arms into the air and stops the clock.-Al Ortolani, co-author of Ghost Sign & Francis Shoots Pool at Chubb's Bar

Jason Ryberg is the author of fourteen books of poetry, six screenplays, a few short stories, several angry letters to various magazine and newspaper editors, and a box full of folders, notebooks and scraps of paper that could one day be (loosely) construed as a novel. He is currently an artist-in-residence at both The Prospero Institute of Disquieted P/o/e/t/i/c/s and the Osage Arts Community. He lives part-time in Kansas City with a rooster named Little Red and a billygoat named Giuseppe and part- time somewhere in the Ozarks, near the Gasconade River, where there are also many strange and wonderful woodland critters.