Down with the Ship

Poetry. DOWN WITH THE SHIP is Ryan Murphy's first full-length collection of poetry. A staff member at the Academy of American Poets in New York, Murphy's work echoes a few other poets who've haunted that fair city-names like Berrigan and Ceravolo come to mind-but this is no mere derivative exercise. With a fine ear for cadence and an eye for the odd and illuminating line break, Murphy gleans the U.S. cultural landscape for both detritus and diamonds in the rough, emerging with a unique post-millennial blend of torqued language and affecting (if also disembodied) confession. In this beat-up world we can bat clean-up for the L.A. Dodgers and find joy in "That same old feeling,/a pop song" and yet at once concur that we fight darker thoughts, that "It is wrong/to want to punt/the child that wails/in the night." A fine debut.