Ruth Ellen Kocher profile picture

Ruth Ellen Kocher

About Me

Ruth Ellen Kocher is the author of One Girl Babylon (New Issues Press 2003) When the Moon Knows You're Wandering (New Issues Press, 2001), winner of the Green Rose Prize in Poetry, and Desdemona's Fire (Lotus Press, 1999), winner of the Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award. Her work has appeared in various journals, including Timoty McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, Ninth Letter, Washington Square Journal, Ploughshares, Crab Orchard Review, Clackamas Literary Review, The Missouri Review, African American Review, The Gettysburg Review, and Antioch, among others, and has been translated into Persian in the Iranian literary magazine She'r. She has also worked as a fellow in the Cave Canem Workshop and Yaddo. She teaches in the MFA program at University of Colorado-Boulder
Reviews of Ruth Ellen Kocher's Poetry
“At a time when the self-congratulating forces of darkness and greed strut and stomp across the world stage, along comes Ruth Ellen Kocher. ‘The Life the Heart Leaves’—one of many tantalizing selections—could well have been the title of this moving collection. Unpredictable in voice and tone, these tender, tough poems narrate, educate, commemorate, celebrate and vibrate. ‘The woman I have become is speaking through my mouth,’ Kocher sings. ‘She says, God-forsaken / African violets are blooming / all over my bathroom as the city / rises, as the fields lead to the city, / as the alleys sulk with their black / eyes and their hurt smiles / and the city comforts them saying / I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Never again.’ This versatile poet blinks at nothing under the stars. Speaking and singing in the many voices and key signatures of poetry, our primal human language, Ruth Ellen Kocher shines and sheds visible and audible light. And to darkness and ignorance, light is still spiritual Kryptonite.”—Al Young
“One Girl Babylon takes us from the great human luxury of a moment in which we ‘know her hips / walk on water’ to the unmitigated and also human corruption of ‘the indifference of urban seasons,’ delivering us to ourselves—humans weary from understanding, weary from understanding that is so close but which we keep from each other in so many ways, in so many words. The speaker in these poems wears us out and is worn out—we reach to each other, and this is the fine sensibility of these poems: we reach and almost save each other. That is their moment. Reader and speaker, we are ready to work, but too late. The work of the salvation shown to us here is not in doing, but in undoing what has been done. We serve these poems best by listening, as they have listened to us.”—Alberto Rios
Praise for When the Moon Knows You're Wandering:
"If we are all sometimes lost, as these haunting poems recognize, the gift is that we are lost in this world, a world Kocher's compelling and often searingly tender voice speaks from. ...When the Moon Knows You're Wandering, is, in short, a very wise, beautiful and moving book."—Beckian Fritz Goldberg
"Kocher’s subject matter is refreshingly varied, the emotional tone drifting from languid, through building, to outrage. ...The final section, “Wars Away” is pure lament, a catalogue of the infinite ways in which the peril of living in a body is compensated by a compassion felt and given, a hard-earned celebration of the specificity of being human. It’s a fitting finale for 28 poems which sing in a voice wavering through grief to triumph in the clear syllables of love."—Sandy McKinney, Foreword Magazine
"Ruth Ellen Kocher's second book is an expedition into poetic space where she becomes a sojourner. Kocher travels within this space, employing both free verse and formal techniques to deal vividly with the motion of relationships . . ."—Tara Betts, The Carolina Quarterly
". . . a haunting yet graceful collection that turns on the necessary resilience and fragility in all of us. . ."—Iron Horse Literary Review
Praise for Desdemona's Fire:
"At the heart of these stunning poems is a precise and imaginative examination of the thin line that separates beauty and terror, wisdom and madness, tolerance and hatred."–Bruce Weigl
Myspace Layouts - Myspace Editor

My Interests

Music:

Member Since: 12/03/2007
Band Members:

Record Label: New Issues Poetry and Prose
Type of Label: Major

My Blog

New Audio!!! Four New Poems

Check out the new Audio on my Author's Page. I've recorded from the manuscript, _The First Gods_
Posted by on Wed, 02 May 2007 11:09:00 GMT

New Audio: Albino by Streetlight Anthems His Generation

Rarely do I write a poem in which I do not lie... Sometimes, I lie in order to tell the better truth. I suppose in order to tell Albino's story, I had to lie, to fabricate. But in the heart of this po...
Posted by on Fri, 06 Apr 2007 11:12:00 GMT

New Audio: gigan 29 and The Life the Heart Leaves

...
Posted by on Thu, 05 Apr 2007 23:00:00 GMT

New Audio: Red Shoes and Song of Evelyn, Upstairs

New Audio: Red Shoes and Song of Evelyn, UpstairsThese are two of my favorite poems because they both have a place in the past I choose to keep. The shoes were the most coveted possession in the hous...
Posted by on Mon, 19 Mar 2007 18:23:00 GMT

Her Story of Sky, from One Girl Babylon

Her Story of Sky                                       &nb...
Posted by on Mon, 12 Mar 2007 07:28:00 GMT