Too Long a Solitude: Poems (Univ. of Oklahoma Press) This world-renowned poet will read from his most recent collection. James Ragan is an internationally recognized poet, playwright, and screenwriter, and, for 25 years, served as the director of the University of Southern California’s  Professional Writing Program. Ragan has read his poetry for five heads of state including Mikhail Gorbachev, Czech President Vaclav Havel, and South Korean Prime Minister Young-Hoon Kang, and has been honored here and abroad as an ambassador of poetry.  In 1985 he was one of three Americans, including Robert Bly and Bob Dylan, invited to perform at the First International Poetry Festival in Moscow.  He has performed his poetry at New York’s Carnegie Hall (2000 & 2002) and at the United Nations (2001). Ragan's literary honors include three Fulbright Professorships (Yugoslavia, China, and the Czech Republic ), the Emerson Poetry Prize, eight Pushcart Prize nominations, an NEA, a PSA Gertrude Claytor Award, and the Swan Foundation Humanitarian Award.  He is the author of In the Talking Hours, Womb-Weary, The Hunger Wall, Lusions, Selected Poetry, Too Long a Solitude, Shouldering the World and is co-editor of Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Collected Poems: 1952-1990.