“The voice of these poems lives in myth and dream, and therefore holds the secrets of our deepest hopes and desires. Ransick knows how to beautifully turn a line, forging music and image into moments masterfully crafted-moments that contain the high and low, bird wing and cloud, screwballs and mud. These poems haunt, humor, and cajole, while moving the reader to higher ground. They lift the reader up and give her a new perspective on what it is to be human.” —Michael J. Henry
Chris Ransick, Denver Poet Laureate from 2006-2010, is an award winning author of five books of poetry and fiction, most recently Language for the Living and the Dead (2013). He has worked as a journalist, editor, professor, and speaker, and has served on his city's public library board, his state's humanities board of directors, and on the PEN Freedom to Write Committee. His first book, Never Summer, won a 2003 Colorado Book Award for Poetry and all his titles are available in new editions from Conundrum Press. Since 2005, Chris has been a faculty member and Book Project Mentor at Lighthouse Writers Workshop, Denver's reknowned independent creative writing school, which awarded him the 2013 Beacon Award for Teaching Excellence. Chris Ransick passed away in 2019.