A word before we begin …

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I began writing poetry in college. At the encouragement of another writer, I enrolled in an introductory poetry creative writing class. My final portfolio was well-received and gained me entrance into 300- and 400-level workshops, one taught by a Pulitzer Prize finalist, the other by a Pulitzer Prize winner. I was a budding graphic designer moonlighting as a poet, and, surrounded by rooms full of poets-to-be, I felt like a fraud. I quickly dropped both classes and stopped writing poetry altogether.

 

Twenty-five years later, we moved to the Flint Hills outside Manhattan, Kansas, and I began to hike the trails around our home. Hiking was not new to me: I had been hiking for years—in places both famous and less so—but the simple act of hiking the same expanse of tallgrass prairie fostered in me a kindredness with the land I had not felt before. I began not just to see it or feel it but to know it—and it me. Unexpectedly, poems began springing forth during walks, and I began to pay attention.

 

What follows are the poems I wrote that first year, arranged in the order in which they were written. In the time since, I have no doubt written better poems, but these were the ones that brought poetry back into my life—and planted the prairie deep in my soul.

 

To those who have read, or have heard me read these poems, I am grateful for your support and encouragement. 

 

Ryan Kegley

January 2025