ryancmccarty.bsky.social

This new poem about the data center projects being forced on the people of SE Michigan just came out in Arcana's "Utterly Human" series. The thing to pay attention to is the plants that learned to grow beneath the mower blades, y'know? They remember how to heal. substack.com/home/post/p-...

Ryan McCarty from this week's Poets Respond selection Read the full poem here: www.rattle.com/six-months-b... #poetry

New Rattle Poets Respond piece out today! rattle.com/six-months-b...

Really awesome to read @ryancmccarty.bsky.social’s account of creating the flame for “A Brother’s Gotta Tell Me Goodbye.” 🔥🔥🔥 ryanmccarty.substack.com/p/the-dirty-...

Totally knocked-out to be nominated for Best of the Net by Spark to Flame. This piece was a new kind of thing for me (then again, so is this kind of nomination!).

The new Whale Road Review is out, including a bunch of really sweet pieces, and a new one of mine. Check it out!

A new piece on AI and language change, shaped by corporate muscle. Also . . . y'know . . . me nerding out about words. ryanmccarty.substack.com/p/the-scrum-...

They’re here! So excited to receive my copies of “The Lighthouse Tattoo.” I’m overjoyed. Couldn’t be happier with how it came together. Millions of thanks to my publisher and editor and the whole team at Acre Books. 🔥🎉🍾 @acrebooks.bsky.social

“A Brother’s Gotta Tell Me Goodbye” by Ryan McCarty (Flame) and Dylan Night (Spark) made me cry when I read it. “I squeezed all my hope into a stone and prayed it / toward the lake,...” Check it out, page 5: www.s2fjournal.com/assets/Issue... #poetry #litmag #writingcommunity

So much gross air. So many beautiful plants and waves and even - yes even - people. ryanmccarty.substack.com/p/shaking-of...

Check out my newest Substack piece, in which I push a few metaphors and think a bit more about planting seeds, politics, and the "action" in the daoist concept of non-action. ryanmccarty.substack.com/p/keeping-yo...

Check out my latest piece about how the University of Michigan pretends to be a labor-friendly institution, then strongarms its own grad student workers. www.michigandaily.com/opinion/op-e...

I am tickled by this new poem coming out, like the tickle of someone you love getting leg-hair shivers and prickling you in the middle of the night as winter comes on. ciderpressreview.com/cpr-volume-2...

Misrepresenting Robert Frost in things like Welcome Back emails isn't uncommon, but Michigan President Grasso did it to send a clear message that the university will continue to persecute protestors. Boooo. #goblue ryanmccarty.substack.com/p/poetry-pro...

My new poem in Collateral starts with the murder of Refaat Alareer and tracks the inevitable effect of so much death on all of us. But they blew up this silly picture of me for the thumbnail . . . www.collateraljournal.com/poetry/rmcca...

Today, Ryan McCarty shares his ‘sort-of cento,’ What Will Poets Do Now?, along with his thoughts on revision, the creative opportunities he finds on his bus-ride commutes, and how he thinks of success as a writer. Thanks Ryan! pinholepoetry.ca/an-interview...

This one has a darker tone that doesn't always show up often in my writing . . . but I'm damn happy to see it in the company of such great poets and poems. Separation by Ryan McCarty oneartpoetry.com/2025/04/29/s...

As markets take a beating, there’s lots of writing about this being caused byTrump's incompetence, but he seems surrounded by people who would love to design a fire sale like this to snatch things up on the cheap. Love to see thoughts @thedigradio.bsky.social @timbarker.bsky.social . . . etc

It's a hard world out there. Maybe it's worth thinking about the stories we tell about that . . . ryanmccarty.substack.com/p/dark-stori...

If universities actually cared about education more than their billion-dollar profit machine athletic programs, they wouldn't open sales of next season's tickets during school hours. Just saying . . .

About a poem I met on the bus. ryanmccarty.substack.com/p/we-can-mak...

Why don't we have a word that is the opposite of suicide? A word for the decision to throw yourself recklessly into life? To disappear into living? ryanmccarty.substack.com/p/i-wish-you...

When you spend time week after week with incarcerated folks, with folks in shelters, folks in tough places, and one is moving on, you can say "I'm looking forward to not seeing you next time!" and it's this thing we don't have a word for, the opposite of suicide, where someone disappears into life.

When a Beck album ended, the algorithm took me to Porno for Pyros, and it occurred to me that the shift in waiting for the inevitable takeover of aliens to waiting for the inevitable AI takeover is that AI is just so much more boring. Computers would never keep us as pets. youtu.be/mFkRvF8MeYM?...

Really happy to see this piece I wrote with one of my UM Dearborn colleagues published. Less happy to have to point out more austerity moves by the University of Michigan. Increasing writing section caps from 15 to 30 students is bad for students and teachers! www.michigandaily.com/opinion/op-e...

ryanmccarty.substack.com/p/sometimes-...

ryanmccarty.substack.com/p/fuck-the-i...

Hmmm. So, I'm new around here, and maybe it's me, but the site seems like it's just a place for me to be contacted by hooker bots? I might need to just start walking around and talking to people . . .

If you stood still and let the pale sunlight descend around you and said nothing, you’d catch the echo of human voices, but better not to hear what was said. —Philip Levine

It's a lot of work to meet with every student individually at the beginning of the semester, but I think it pays off in all kinds of intangible connective ways over the course of the semester. BUT, it also makes the actual work easier all semester. Good teaching isn't only asceticism and altruism!

Thinking about forest fires and poetry and how a lot of things coalesce together in messy ways to make us see something we might not have otherwise. Wrote this thing. ryanmccarty.substack.com/p/forest-fir...