Ryan McCarty from this week's Poets Respond selection Read the full poem here: www.rattle.com/six-months-b... #poetry
@ryancmccarty.bsky.social
Really awesome to read @ryancmccarty.bsky.social’s account of creating the flame for “A Brother’s Gotta Tell Me Goodbye.” 🔥🔥🔥 ryanmccarty.substack.com/p/the-dirty-...
The Dirty Dead-Grass Path to Poetry
or, What I Learned from Collaborative Writing
ryanmccarty.substack.com
Spark to Flame@s2fjournal.bsky.social · 2w agoCongrats to our @sundresspub.bsky.social Best of the Net 2027 nominations! #bestofthenet #writingcommunity #poetry #botn
Totally knocked-out to be nominated for Best of the Net by Spark to Flame. This piece was a new kind of thing for me (then again, so is this kind of nomination!).
Spark to Flame@s2fjournal.bsky.social · 2w agoCongrats to our @sundresspub.bsky.social Best of the Net 2027 nominations! #bestofthenet #writingcommunity #poetry #botn
The new Whale Road Review is out, including a bunch of really sweet pieces, and a new one of mine. Check it out!
Whale Road Review@whaleroadreview.bsky.social · 2w agoThis Fall 2026 issue feels so tender and intimate... www.whaleroadreview.com/issue-44-fal...
A new piece on AI and language change, shaped by corporate muscle. Also . . . y'know . . . me nerding out about words. ryanmccarty.substack.com/p/the-scrum-...
The Scrum of Language and AI
In which I go deep on a word that doesn’t matter to me nearly as much as the integrity of learning and thinking does.
ryanmccarty.substack.com
They’re here! So excited to receive my copies of “The Lighthouse Tattoo.” I’m overjoyed. Couldn’t be happier with how it came together. Millions of thanks to my publisher and editor and the whole team at Acre Books. 🔥🎉🍾 @acrebooks.bsky.social
“A Brother’s Gotta Tell Me Goodbye” by Ryan McCarty (Flame) and Dylan Night (Spark) made me cry when I read it. “I squeezed all my hope into a stone and prayed it / toward the lake,...” Check it out, page 5: www.s2fjournal.com/assets/Issue... #poetry #litmag #writingcommunity
So much gross air. So many beautiful plants and waves and even - yes even - people. ryanmccarty.substack.com/p/shaking-of...
Shaking Off the Smoke
Beaches and Mullein and Political Presumptions
ryanmccarty.substack.com
Check out my newest Substack piece, in which I push a few metaphors and think a bit more about planting seeds, politics, and the "action" in the daoist concept of non-action. ryanmccarty.substack.com/p/keeping-yo...
Keeping Your Pants On When There's So Much To Be Done
Or, why buying seeds is a great example of the action in non-action
ryanmccarty.substack.com
Check out my latest piece about how the University of Michigan pretends to be a labor-friendly institution, then strongarms its own grad student workers. www.michigandaily.com/opinion/op-e...
What the latest GEO negotiations teach us about institutional power
Sitting and watching, it was clear to me that the process was a lot less efficient than just sitting down and talking face-to-face, which is why shuttle diplomacy is usually reserved for negotiations ...
michigandaily.com
I am tickled by this new poem coming out, like the tickle of someone you love getting leg-hair shivers and prickling you in the middle of the night as winter comes on. ciderpressreview.com/cpr-volume-2...
Ode to Leg Hair by Ryan McCarty – Cider Press Review
ciderpressreview.com
Misrepresenting Robert Frost in things like Welcome Back emails isn't uncommon, but Michigan President Grasso did it to send a clear message that the university will continue to persecute protestors. Boooo. #goblue ryanmccarty.substack.com/p/poetry-pro...
Poetry, Protest, and Presidential Welcome Emails
How the University of Michigan Interim President Misrepresented Robert Frost and Why that Matters
ryanmccarty.substack.com
My new poem in Collateral starts with the murder of Refaat Alareer and tracks the inevitable effect of so much death on all of us. But they blew up this silly picture of me for the thumbnail . . . www.collateraljournal.com/poetry/rmcca...
"Disappearances" a poem by Ryan McCarty — Collateral Journal
a literary journal publishing literary and visual art concerned with the impact of violent conflict and military service beyond the combat zone. poetry, fiction, nonfiction and visual arts
collateraljournal.com
Today, Ryan McCarty shares his ‘sort-of cento,’ What Will Poets Do Now?, along with his thoughts on revision, the creative opportunities he finds on his bus-ride commutes, and how he thinks of success as a writer. Thanks Ryan! pinholepoetry.ca/an-interview...
This one has a darker tone that doesn't always show up often in my writing . . . but I'm damn happy to see it in the company of such great poets and poems. Separation by Ryan McCarty oneartpoetry.com/2025/04/29/s...
Separation by Ryan McCarty
Separation Sometimes I feel like fatherhood is a matter of standing still, holding the crack of light open, listening for the rumpled sigh of a child back in bed, the terror leaking in through loos…
oneartpoetry.com
As markets take a beating, there’s lots of writing about this being caused byTrump's incompetence, but he seems surrounded by people who would love to design a fire sale like this to snatch things up on the cheap. Love to see thoughts @thedigradio.bsky.social @timbarker.bsky.social . . . etc
It's a hard world out there. Maybe it's worth thinking about the stories we tell about that . . . ryanmccarty.substack.com/p/dark-stori...
Dark Stories and Trash Rotting in the Yard
or, My Daughter is the Coolest 11 yr Old I Know.
ryanmccarty.substack.com
If universities actually cared about education more than their billion-dollar profit machine athletic programs, they wouldn't open sales of next season's tickets during school hours. Just saying . . .
Why don't we have a word that is the opposite of suicide? A word for the decision to throw yourself recklessly into life? To disappear into living? ryanmccarty.substack.com/p/i-wish-you...
I Wish You the Opposite of Suicide
What's the word for the decision to throw yourself recklessly off the cliff, to disappear into life?
ryanmccarty.substack.com
When you spend time week after week with incarcerated folks, with folks in shelters, folks in tough places, and one is moving on, you can say "I'm looking forward to not seeing you next time!" and it's this thing we don't have a word for, the opposite of suicide, where someone disappears into life.
When a Beck album ended, the algorithm took me to Porno for Pyros, and it occurred to me that the shift in waiting for the inevitable takeover of aliens to waiting for the inevitable AI takeover is that AI is just so much more boring. Computers would never keep us as pets. youtu.be/mFkRvF8MeYM?...
Pets
YouTube video by Porno for Pyros - Topic
youtu.be
Really happy to see this piece I wrote with one of my UM Dearborn colleagues published. Less happy to have to point out more austerity moves by the University of Michigan. Increasing writing section caps from 15 to 30 students is bad for students and teachers! www.michigandaily.com/opinion/op-e...
U-M Dearborn increased class sizes; Ann Arbor should take notice
In all these instances, we can see the University Administration strategically increasing workloads for instructors and reducing support for graduate and undergraduate students, worsening working and learning conditions.
michigandaily.com
Hmmm. So, I'm new around here, and maybe it's me, but the site seems like it's just a place for me to be contacted by hooker bots? I might need to just start walking around and talking to people . . .
If you stood still and let the pale sunlight descend around you and said nothing, you’d catch the echo of human voices, but better not to hear what was said. —Philip Levine
“One Brother Said to the Other, ‘Let’s Go into the Fields'” by Philip Levine
Beyond the old barn a small stream ran all those winter days, and beyond the stream almost nothing grew except weeds, poke grass, burdock, scatterings
rattle.com
It's a lot of work to meet with every student individually at the beginning of the semester, but I think it pays off in all kinds of intangible connective ways over the course of the semester. BUT, it also makes the actual work easier all semester. Good teaching isn't only asceticism and altruism!
Thinking about forest fires and poetry and how a lot of things coalesce together in messy ways to make us see something we might not have otherwise. Wrote this thing. ryanmccarty.substack.com/p/forest-fir...
Forest Fires and The Poetry of Asking for Forgiveness
A bit of confluence - funny how that happens when we get mornings off . . .
ryanmccarty.substack.com