Books

Surface Fugue

EastOver Press (2021)

WINNER: Poetry Society of New Hampshire’s “Best Book of the Year”. The title poem, which originally appeared in New England Review, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and the book (in previous forms) was selected as a semi-finalist for the National Poetry Series and as a finalist for the Lena-Miles Wever Todd Prize (Pleiades), the May Swenson Poetry Award (Utah State University Press), and the Cider Press Review Book Award. Poems in this book appeared in The American Poetry Review, Agni, Birmingham Poetry Review, Down East, Harvard Review, The New Republic, Ploughshares, POETRY, Salamander, Southampton Review, Southwest Review, Zócalo Public Square and other magazines.

“…Sneeden knows how to read the patterns and features of water and, from those shifting runes governed by planetary forces, discovers a sublime and buoyant joy that produces what he modestly but fiercely calls the “Elation / of contact.” …Sneeden is writing with a rare urgency and at the height of his powers.” —Michael Collier (former director of The Breadloaf Writers’ Conference, author of The Missing Mountain: New and Selected Poems, Dark Wild Realm, and The Ledge)

“Like a musician who has spent months in the woodshed, Sneeden emerges with brilliant variations on distance and memory, distillations of history and love, a sublime mix of self-reflection and intimacy juxtaposed with a larger world view… His approach to imagery, form, prosody and prose is so acute, tender, insightful and confrontational…” —Willie Perdomo (State Poet of New York and author of The Crazy Bunch and The Essential Hits of Shorty Bon Bon, winner of the International Latino Book Award )

“Sneeden is a master of making lyrics where memory reveals its mysterium, its engine. …Surely, we realize right away that we are reading a poet with an unusual talent for making his remembered world into a place a reader can wander into and be stunned. …Surely, this writing is an act of spell-making. Yes. But it is also so take-no-prisoners real, so of this world, so needled with humor and heart…” —Ilya Kaminsky (author of Deaf Republic and Dancing in Odessa, recipient of the LA Times Book Award, finalist for the National Book Award)

Evidence of the Journey

Harmon Blunt Publishers (2007)

Received honorable mention for the Shenandoah/Glasgow Prize for Emerging Writers and was released in 2007 by Harmon Blunt Publishing (New York). The title poem was the recipient of the Friends of Literature Prize from POETRY magazine and the Poetry Foundation. An earlier version of the manuscript (Off Little Misery Island) was a finalist for The Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize, The Walt Whitman Award (Academy of American Poets), The Kathryn A. Morton Prize (Sarabande Books), The Brittingham and Pollak Prizes (University of Wisconsin) and the Wick Poetry Prize (Kent State). Individual poems in this book originally appeared in: The Kenyon Review, New England Review, The New Republic, Ploughshares, POETRY, Poetry Daily, Slate.com, The Southern Review, TriQuarterly and other magazines. Read fiction writer Paul Yoon’s tribute to the title poem on Poetry Daily: “What Poetry Sparks” (March 22, 2021).

"The closely observed, condensed, true poems in Evidence of the Journey are constantly startling, convincing bulletins from "the smoldering front lines/ of the home front." —Jonathan Galassi (author of Muse, Left-Handed and Collected Poems of Eugenio Montale: 1920-1954, translator)

“Anyone who loves music and dancing has had the pleasant experience of taking ordinary turns with ordinary partners, but there's a thrill of dancing with someone who knows more, who subsumes you with unexpected grace. Turn a few pages of Ralph Sneeden’s Evidence of the Journey and poise, the charm, the energy takes over. Sneeden is accomplished, versatile, exciting as few poets were born to be. His voice makes you trust the right way is the way he’s going. He can be as salty as he likes, he has strength and grip and distance. I loved these poems from beginning to end.” —Dave Smith (author of The Roundhouse Voices, Cuba Night, The Wick of Memory: New and Selected Poems, Little Boats, Unsalvaged, Hawks on Wires: Poems 2005-2010, and Looking Up: Poems 2010-2020)

"Ralph Sneeden’s poems are substantial, testing the tongue and the teeth, freighted with word-substance and world-substance. They are not afraid of stories, or of the deep oddness and even violence inside the ordinary, like the aunt’s police revolver in her pocketbook in the poem “Revolver.” At the same time, with beautiful tact, Sneeden knows what to leave out, what to leave to the auspices of silence. His is a world of smoky family gatherings, remembered war, childhood scenes, estuaries, fishing, empty parks, all recreated and questioned with keen and humane intelligence: “Why look to the other cold planets/ when the wastes are here at home?” (“Elegy for Wolf Vishniac”). This is an admirable and clear-sighted book.” —Rosanna Warren (author of So Forth, Earthworks: Selected Poems, Ghost in a Red Hat, and Fables of the Self: Studies in Lyric Poetry)

“Visual clarity, economy, mystery, emotional precision, formal authority, along with the quirky wit of deep truth – every page of Evidence of the Journey offers immensely rewarding reading. It’s a rare occasion when a first book contains the work of a master poet.” —David Huddle (author of Only the Little Bone, The High Spirits, Nothing Can Make Me Do This, The Faulkes Chronicles, Summer Lake: New and Selected Poems, Dreamsender, My Surly Heart, and Blacksnake at the Family Reunion)

Cover image: “Eaton’s Neck” (John Frederick Kensett, oil on canvas, 1872)

The Legible Element

EastOver Press (2023)

The Legible Element (EastOver Press) is a collection of water-centric personal essays, some featured in The Surfer’s Journal, The Common, and other magazines.

“Just read one page and beware of the undertow.”—Jennifer Acker, author of The Limits of the World and editor of The Common

“…elemental, cerebral, sometimes dangerous, and completely enrapturing for anyone with a love of wild, liminal places.”—Alex Wilson, editor, The Surfer’s Journal

“These essays are profound—you’ll want to follow this voice wherever it goes, and where it goes is a kind of mortal delight”—Bill Roorbach, author of Summers with Juliet, Temple Stream, Life Among Giants, Lucky Turtle, and editor of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction: The Art of Truth (Oxford University Press)

“…this was a book that shook me, dove, and soared—a monumental work from a writer at his peak, a writer whom I would follow to the ends of the earth, forever." —Paul Yoon, author of Snow Hunters, Run Me to Earth, and The Mountain

“Ralph Sneeden’s lyrical and ontological essay collection… An inventive and deeply introspective blend of poetry and prose, The Legible Element probes place through the element of water. With keen observations on desire, delight, and dismay, Sneeden beckons his readers to the humbling power of nature.”—New England Review (New Books by NER Authors)

“The Legible Element astounds […]Mr. Sneeden demonstrates a mastery of the essay that complements his achievement with poetry […] At times, bathed in the past, "Django" reminds one of the best essays of E.B. White. The emotional heart of the book, it yields to others on surfing, the sport that inspires Mr. Sneeden to paddle forward on coasts both local and distant. It shapes his life and, ironically, grounds him as an escape from a mutable world and its ephemeral experiences.” —Daniel Picker, The East Hampton Star

“Perhaps because Sneeden writes so much about the New England landscape, the reader cannot help but draw a connection to writers of the past such as Emerson and Thoreau. But even if he has walked through their shadows, there is too much distance in voice and aesthetic to not see Sneeden’s work in its own stunning light.” —Matt Miller in The Common magazine