Uploaded November 2019 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
This poem comes from a collection called "Language For the Living and the Dead" by Chris Ransick, which was published in 2013 by Conundrum Press. I was fortunate to have worked on all Chris’s books in some form or other, either as new releases or reprints. For all but a couple of volumes, I designed the covers and the interiors of his poetry collections, working closely with Chris throughout the process. Before then, I was a student in his classes after I decided to go back to school. Chris was the first instructor I had in a media literacy class. He was also the adviser for the student newspaper and literary magazine at that school, always fighting hard for the rights of student journalists and fostering in students an appreciation of reading and writing. So for a couple of years, I worked on the paper and the magazine, eventually transferring to a university and then to graduate school. After school, I co-owned a small literary press and Chris allowed us to publish his work.
Since Chris died last Monday, tributes from his students, friends, and fellow poets have poured in. He was the Denver poet laureate for a few years and so was able to spread his evangelism for poetry beyond his own classrooms to the public at large. He never stopped advocating for freedom of the press and against institutional inertia. He and his wife relocated to the coast of Oregon, but came back to Denver in late September for a farewell reading at the Lighthouse Writers Workshop, where he taught for many years. The standing-room only crowd laughed and cried along with Chris as he shared his work once again.
To hear other poets read Chris’s work and to hear him at that final reunion reading, you can find a podcast here:
lighthousewriters.org/blog/chris-ransick-celebration
(His reading begins at 66 minutes into the audio; the soundcloud file is at the bottom of the page.)
This poem comes from a collection called "Language For the Living and the Dead" by Chris Ransick, which was published in 2013 by Conundrum Press. I was fortunate to have worked on all Chris’s books in some form or other, either as new releases or reprints. For all but a couple of volumes, I designed the covers and the interiors of his poetry collections, working closely with Chris throughout the process. Before then, I was a student in his classes after I decided to go back to school. Chris was the first instructor I had in a media literacy class. He was also the adviser for the student newspaper and literary magazine at that school, always fighting hard for the rights of student journalists and fostering in students an appreciation of reading and writing. So for a couple of years, I worked on the paper and the magazine, eventually transferring to a university and then to graduate school. After school, I co-owned a small literary press and Chris allowed us to publish his work.
Since Chris died last Monday, tributes from his students, friends, and fellow poets have poured in. He was the Denver poet laureate for a few years and so was able to spread his evangelism for poetry beyond his own classrooms to the public at large. He never stopped advocating for freedom of the press and against institutional inertia. He and his wife relocated to the coast of Oregon, but came back to Denver in late September for a farewell reading at the Lighthouse Writers Workshop, where he taught for many years. The standing-room only crowd laughed and cried along with Chris as he shared his work once again.
To hear other poets read Chris’s work and to hear him at that final reunion reading, you can find a podcast here:
lighthousewriters.org/blog/chris-ransick-celebration
(His reading begins at 66 minutes into the audio; the soundcloud file is at the bottom of the page.)
