Zen monk, poet to visit campus

Seido Ray Ronci will give a free public poetry reading March 11 at 8 p.m. in the Alice Peters Auditorium.  The event is the third in the San Joaquin Literary Association’s new Visiting Writer Series.

Ronci teaches mythology, literary theory and postmodern American poetry at the University of Missouri-Columbia. He is a Zen monk and director of Hokoku-An Zendo in Columbia, Mo.

Ronci is the author of five chapbooks of poetry. His most recent, “The World of Difference,” was published by Pressed Wafer Press in 2001. A full-length collection of poetry, “This Rented Body,” is scheduled to be published this summer.

Fresno State poetry professor Dr. Timothy Skeen says, “Ray Ronci’s poems prove to me how it is still possible to show up for life every day in this world.”

Skeen points to a short poem from Ronci’s most recent manuscript, “Skeleton of the Crow,” a book of Zen poems, as an example. In that poem, Ronci describes one of the pleasures that eases his suffering – playing piano: “Afternoon spent/ playing jazz and blues piano// my fingers, my arms/ are feathers falling// the price of admission:/ as always, this body.”

“Reading Ray’s poems is one of the pleasures of this world,” Skeen says, “and all in all, helps to do for me what the best poetry ought to do: justify this life’s high price of admission.” 

Ronci's poems have appeared in the journals "Ploughshares," "Prairie Schooner," "Rattle," "Iowa Review," and elsewhere. He has poems in the anthology "America Zen: A Gathering of Poets," published in 2004 by Bottom Dog Press. He has won an AWP Intro Award, an Academy of American Poets Award, and the John H. Vreeland Award for Literary Composition from the University of Nebraska. He has also won scholarships to Breadloaf, Sewanee, and White River writers’ conferences. His selected poems can be found online as part of the Sugar Mule chapbook series at http://www.marclweber.com/sugarmule/flash12.htm

The Visiting Writer Series, co-sponsored by the MFA Program in Creative Writing, the Department of English, the College of Arts and Humanities, and Associated Students Inc., aims to attract writers and literary figures from across the publishing world to reinforce the importance of literature within the University community.

The group’s next event is April 28 with Polish poet Krystyna Lenkowska.