RAY, David (Eugene)

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Nationality: American. Born: Sapulpa, Oklahoma, 20 May 1932. Education: University of Chicago, B.A. 1952, M.A. 1957. Family: Married 1) Florence (divorced), one daughter; 2) Ruth in 1964 (divorced), one son (deceased 1984) and one stepdaughter; 3) Judy Morrish in 1970, one stepdaughter. Career: Member of the faculty, Wright Junior College, Chicago 1957–58, Northern Illinois University, De Kalb, 1958–60, and Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, 1960–64; assistant professor of literature and humanities, Reed College, Portland, Oregon, 1964–66; lecturer in English, University of Iowa, Iowa City, 1969–70; associate professor, Bowling Green State University, Ohio, 1970–71. Professor of English, 1971–95, and since 1995 professor emeritus, University of Missouri, Kansas City. Visiting professor, Syracuse University, New York, 1978–79, University of Rajasthan, India, 1981–82, and University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand, 1987. Indo-U.S. fellow, 1981–82. Editor, Chicago Review, 1956–57; associate editor, Epoch, Ithaca, New York, 1960–64; editor, New Letters, Kansas City, Missouri, 1971–85. Awards: New Republic Young Writers award, 1958; Bread Loaf Writers Conference Robert Frost fellowship, 1964; Woursell Foundation and University of Vienna fellowship, 1966; Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines fellowship, 1979; William Carlos Williams award, 1979, 1993; National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, 1983; Sotheby's Arvon prize, 1983; P.E.N. fiction award, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987; Maurice English award, 1988; award for poetry, Nebraska Review, 1989; national poetry award, Passaic Community College, 1989; first prize for fiction, Kansas City View, 1990; first prize award, Stanley Hanks Memorial Contest, St. Louis Poetry Center, 1990, 1991; first prize in fiction and first prize in poetry, H.G. Roberts Foundation award, 1993; Kossuth award, Hungarian Freedom Fighters. Address: 2033 East 10^th Street, Tucson, Arizona 85719–5925, U.S.A.

Publications

Poetry

X-Rays. Ithaca, New York, Cornell University Press, 1965.

Dragging the Main and Other Poems. Ithaca, New York, Cornell University Press, 1968.

A Hill in Oklahoma. Shawnee Mission, Kansas, Bkmk Press, 1972.

Gathering Firewood: New Poems and Selected. Middletown, Connecticut, Wesleyan University Press, 1974.

Enough of Flying: Poems Inspired by the Ghazals of Ghalib. Calcutta, Writers Workshop, 1977.

The Tramp's Cup. Kirksville, Missouri, Chariton Review Press, 1978.

Five Missouri Poets, with others, edited by Jim Barnes. Kirksville, Missouri, Chariton Review Press, 1979.

The Farm in Calabria and Other Poems, edited by Morty Sklar. Iowa City, Spirit That Moves, 1980.

The Touched Life: Poems Selected and New. Metuchen, New Jersey, Scarecrow Press, 1982.

On Wednesday I Cleaned Out My Wallet. San Francisco, Pancake Press, 1985.

Elysium in the Halls of Hell. Jaipur, India, Nirala, 1986.

Sam's Book. Middletown, Connecticut, Wesleyan University Press, 1987.

The Maharani's New Wall and Other Poems. Middletown, Connecticut, Wesleyan University Press, 1989.

Wool Highways. Kansas City, Missouri, Helicon Nine Editions, 1993.

Kangaroo Paws: Poems Written in Australia. Kirksville, Missouri, Thomas Jefferson University Press, 1994.

Recording: An Old Nickel and Dime Store, Watershed, 1978.

Short Stories

The Mulberries of Mingo. Austin, Texas, Cold Mountain Press, 1978.

Other

Editor, The Chicago Review Anthology. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, and London, Cambridge University Press, 1959.

Editor, From the Hungarian Revolution: A Collection of Poems. Ithaca, New York, Cornell University Press, 1966.

Editor, with Robert Bly, A Poetry Reading against the Vietnam War. Madison, Minnesota, American Writers Against the Vietnam War, 1966.

Editor, with Robert M. Farnsworth, Richard Wright: Impressions and Perspectives. Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 1973.

Editor, with Gary Gildner, Since Feeling Is First: An Anthology of New American Poetry. Kansas City, University of Missouri, 1976.

Editor, with Judy Ray, New Asian Writing. Calcutta, Writers Workshop, 1979.

Editor, with Jack Salzman, The Jack Conroy Reader. New York, Burt Franklin, 1979.

Editor, From A to Z: 200 Contemporary American Poets. Athens, Swallow Press—Ohio University Press, 1981.

Editor, Collected Poems, by E.L. Mayo. Athens, Ohio University Press, 1981.

Editor, with Amritjit Singh, India: An Anthology of Contemporary Writing. Athens, Ohio University Press, 1983.

Editor, New Letters Reader 1 and 2. Athens, Swallow Press—Ohio University Press, 2 vols., 1983–84.

Editor, with Judy Ray, Fathers: A Collection of Poems. New York, St. Martin's Press, 1997.

Translator, Not Far from the River (from the Prakrit). Jaipur, India, Prakrit Society, 1983; enlarged edition, Port Townsend, Washington, Copper Canyon Press, 1990.

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Critical Study: By Andy Brumer, in New York Times Book Review (New York), 17 January 1988.

David Ray comments:

I like comparisons that have been made of my poems to X rays or to found objects, as my poems are attempts to render verbal equivalents of what happens inside me or in persons or things I have found in the world and that have given me and sometimes them a different context through my finding them.

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David Ray's poems are rooted in personal experience—those that have befallen him or persons he knows—and in places: his childhood homes, his hometown, various American cities and countrysides, and foreign shores. At their best, and much of Ray's work is excellent, his poems reveal their maker's deep understanding of the subject at hand while simultaneously offering the reader an elegance of expression. His work is never heavy-handed or fey but always honest, whether he is zeroing in on memories of his childhood or on his sociopolitical concerns. Speaking to his son in "At the Washing of My Son," Ray remembers when he first saw the boy, focusing on a topic most fathers would find difficult, if not impossible, to approach—the Oedipal situation—with such sharpness and candor that one is momentarily awestruck.

Ray displays a lyrical intensity that is enthralling. A boy's terror over growing old is revealed in the second part of "Two Farm Scenes." The wonderful contrast of the "grandfather /Grey in the startling sun" with the "silken curls" of corn tassels, a youthful and sexual image, shows Ray's craft at its most effective. The same thing may also be observed in "The Paseo in Irun" or in "At the Train Station in Pamplona," in which lovers break up. Ray's poems reverberate with detail. Some are of a private, lyrical nature, but other details are decidedly public in nature, evoking a particular time and place.

Many of Ray's poems offer poignant, even brutal views of rural or small town life. The "I" in one of the strongest of these, "Dragging the Main," finally speaks with the girl with whom he is infatuated and whom he has been following "round and round the /City blocks" all night. But urban life does not escape Ray's eye. In poems such as "A Midnight Diner by Edward Hopper" he reveals the loneliness of city dwellers.

Nevertheless, nowhere in Ray's work is the brutality and loneliness of life more evident and more heartfelt than in those poems, published in Sam's Book, that deal either overtly or covertly with the untimely death of his son. In "To Sam," for example, the loneliness, the hurt, and the numbness caused by the loss are revealed succinctly, without self-pity but with an open-eyed, almost startling objectivity. In a similar manner his exhaustion over coping with Sam's death is disclosed in "Beads, Pony, Prayer": "Dear Lord let us pray for another day /In which nothing happens, absolutely nothing."

While most of Ray's work is personal, even private, there is a public side to him, a strong social concern that rarely sinks into the pedantic or propagandistic. Whether addressing issues of international importance or those of concern in the United States, his public poetry is as deeply felt and intelligent as his more private work. In "Some Notes on Vietnam," for instance, his bitterness over U.S. involvement in that Asian country is concisely, powerfully stated:

What have they brought to the streets
of Saigon except smog
and for the kids lessons on how to suck?

Yet his social consciousness does not exclude the possibility of, or even the need for, humor in dealing with the social ills of our day. For example, "The Indians near Red Lake," which is told from a Native American's point of view, sometimes uses humor to reveal the absurdity of white chauvinism.

Elysium in the Halls of Hell and The Maharani's New Wall are rooted in Ray's experiences in India. The collections are filled with portraits of untouchables, purdah, starvation, and despair, but within such scenes, which are painted objectively, the reader finds glimmers of truth. In "Grapes of Wrath," for example, Ray suggests a parallel between the Okies of the United States and the untouchables of India.

A more muted, but no less heartfelt, political concern is at work in Ray's collections Wool Highways and Kangaroo Paws. Both books recount Ray's experiences during visits to, respectively, New Zealand and Australia. Relying on his keen observations and finely honed craft, the poems abound with peacocks, kangaroos, the bush, Aborigines, and the didgeridoo and with persons of literary importance who are little known, if at all, elsewhere, the poets James K. Baxter and A.D. Hope, for example. Yet these poems never succumb to the stranger-in-a-strange-land genre. Instead, what is new to Ray becomes in his capable hands uniquely his and, in turn, his reader's.

—Jim Elledge