Massacre of the Innocents (Iowa Poetry Prize)

Massacre of the Innocents is the work of a secular poet who admires the basic texts - the angry qualities of fairytales equally along with the humorous virtues of sacred scriptures. Speaking with the voice of mature accomplishment, Ramke's poems do not struggle for their words but release them from a near-inexhaustible source.
As Ramke has said, "Poems are like children and have minds and manners of their own, luckily beyond the control of parents and poets." These poems talk back and they talk to each other. By stripping away the distractions of received meaning from the words he uses, Ramke makes the necessary connection between reader and poem that can freshen meaning - make it new - as is often claimed for poetry but seldom achieved so well as in his work.