Poet reflects on Czech upbringing

By Jeff Dusing
Daily Forty-Niner

Students and faculty from Cal State Long Beach came together Thursday evening to listen to renowned poet James Ragan speak and read from his many works.

"I want to get words like the ëArtist' back in their vocabulary," said Ragan regarding one his goals for speaking to groups.

"I love doing this," he said. "You have a chance to move people."

Ragan did move people as he acknowledged the silence of the audience as he read from his poems and spoke of his life.

With great passion and wit, Ragan spoke about growing up in Czechoslovakia.

As one of 13 children, the poet reflected on life under the iron curtain and recounted stories of traveling the Czech countryside with his father.

His agenda also included a motivational theme urging students to improve our global society.
 
His work "has to do with the disintegration of culture," Ragan said. "I want them [the audience] to get a sense of understanding of this large world."

Ragan urged students to embrace a more global awareness and communication across cultures.

He also spoke about the plague of the next century, poverty and starvation.

With such poems as "The Hunger Wall" and "The Tent People Of Beverly Hills," Ragan read with strong emotion, much of the time with his eyes closed, reciting only from memory.

"I don't like to have the book as a barrier between me and the audience," Ragan said.

"I am not as much performing as I am kind of reliving the poem."

As the director of the Professional Writing Program at USC, Ragan read for former Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985, and in March he will be reading before the United Nations.

Before the evening drew to a close he was generous in giving the young poets in attendance suggestions for their own careers.

"It is your duty as a writer to rediscover and reshape language," Ragan said.

"I thought it was breathtaking," said Stephen Cooper, coordinator of the creative writing program at CSULB."Any time a poet of his repute can stand up there with out even looking down at the page and live his poems, I really appreciate it."

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