First, Ray, on Ray...... 

 

     "I've heeded the calling of inner voice married to outer world. I'm blessed to be following a bliss that has carried me through college, six books of monologues and poems and co-editing one anthology of Buddhist poems, two solo stage shows, two historical character creations, numerous theatrical collaborations, several bands, and years of writing and performance workshops for students from kindergarten to college. A writer is here to listen as much as to speak, to learn as much as to teach, to give what has been given via the word."

 

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    What others say...

   
"...a born poet and a born performer..."
- - Yevgeny Yevtushenko, legendary Russian poet

 

"Make no mistake, Ray McNiece is a patriot in the truest sense of the word. He has America coursing through his veins, and his poems are an open highway with a cool Midwestern wind blowing through them. 'Our Way of Life' is a cathartic journey, taking you from meditations on the atrocious war in Iraq to homages to the nation's great living poets, and ending in the nooks and crannies of a country that, despite the heartache found permeating everything, is still alive, vital and staggeringly beautiful in ways that are breathtaking to behold."
-- Victor D. Infante, editor in chief, "The November 3rd Club"

 

“Where would we be without the voice of Ray McNiece? Who else would sing of the migrations from Appalachia to Ohio, dance the Slovenian Polka, wail the blues for broken New Orleans, mourn the destruction of our last pristine land, rail against the corruption of corporate government, ache for the victims of torture and war, then croon love songs to Cleveland? Who else would connect us with what makes us human? Ray McNiece is our Whitman, our bard, our bodhisattva, our conscience.”
- - Robert Miltner, Kent State University, Author of Rock the Boat and Fellow Traveler.

 

"It's not enough for an artist to be angry. He also has to be good. And Ray McNiece is good and angry in these poems (Our Way of Life) that burn as hot and bright as the extinct blast furnaces of Ohio once did. Whitman, whose ghost is everywhere in these lines, called America "the greatest poem." And I am happy that Ray McNiece's passionate, relentless voice will not stop until he has made us understand how much we have lost."
- - George Bilgere, John Carroll University, author of The Good Kiss

 

It is a poet’s job to tell the truth. McNiece strips away the multiple coats of yellowing varnish in Our Way of Life laying bare a distressed yet solidly built realism. Rather than the usual pop cynicism - these poems embrace an idealism of what should and could be while invoking the language of a poet’s poet. Like a canary in a coal mine he beckons us to come above ground and breathe deep – before it is too late.
- - Michael Salinger, Cleveland Poetics, author of Neon.      

 

"Ray McNiece is an adept reader of his own moving, clearly imaged poems, a skilled performer who does the English language justice. " 
- - X.J. Kennedy, Lamont Poetry Prize Winning Poet. 

 

The Edinburgh Scotsman reported, "McNiece's characters are acutely observed, the speech patterns and mannerisms perfectly caught. In a review in dialogue, arts in the Midwest, John Stickney wrote, "McNiece lends these victims a face with a voice and words, not full of pity but with individual dignity."

 

"McNiece smoothly blends fine writing with an angry political conscience. His folksy but honed poems are drawn from the heart of the working class."
-- Amy Sparks, Free Times

 

"A warm, wise, gracious guide through an infirm world, he teaches his leader how to love." 
-- David Evett, Cleveland State University Poetry Center

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...Ray in Russia touring with the legendary Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko   

...Ray's residency in the Jack Kerouac House, where he wrote The Dharma Bums and where he was when On the Road came to national attention. 

 ...Ray's "featured speaker" engagements to share the stage with both Robert Bly at the First Coast Conference.  Then two Italy tours, and with Lawrence Ferlinghetti at the opening of City Lights Italia in Firenze, Italy. Also, see Ferlinghetti's comment and other reviews on Ray's book at books - The Road That Carried Me Here

 

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 Read sample poems... at the poet & his life, at Kerouac's, in the Books & CDs section, and INSIDE Ray's Place...