Dinosaurs Are Orange in Seattle (Revised Version)

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In The Dinosaurs Are Orange in Seattle, Ry Downey uses his poetic gift to do what poets do best: capturing those unspoken moods, drifting through contradictions of time and place, wandering around, absorbing everything he comes into contact with, and producing it into his own creative blend of words. He melds observations, nostalgia, and philosophical contemplations, into a natural, narrative, stream-of-consciousness style that is both thought-provoking and funny. He's a storyteller, a mind traveler, and a wordsmith, and I could pick up this book, read anywhere, and be effectively transported into his world. This poetry collection is exceptionally well-written, but unpretentious. It's the kind of book one could read from around a campfire, but also in the classroom as well, and I would imagine that selections from it would certainly be among those that a class would like the best. While interacting with his words, I feel like I could be in a Gus Van Sant film, or a song by Conor Oberst, Gregory Alan Isakov, or even Bob Dylan. Downey  comes across as a Beat author for our time and I can see the spirit of Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Ferlinghetti pulsating through him. I wouldn't be surprised if someday City Lights had a collection of his works in their Pocket Poets series. Downey often has the approach of a documentarian, carefully labeling the endings of his individual poems with time and place markers, pulling the reader into those specific moments. He truly encapsulates in his poems what it means to be living as a Millennial today, expressing so well all the doubts, worries, humor, and desires of those coming of age in the 2000s. Regionally, what Downey writes is both very Pacific Northwestern, but can also be quite transcendent, highlighting the moods of so many of us around the world struggling with work and life today. His creations resonate with me like few other contemporary poets do, as a bookseller, a creative, a Millennial, and a Northwesterner. I honestly think more people would read contemporary poetry if they were introduced to works like this, and I sincerely hope more will find him, discover his gift and his art, and be immersed in the written realm he has to offer. Recommended By Nicholas Y., Powells.com

The Dinosaurs Are Orange in Seattle is a love letter in many ways. It is a love letter to memory. It is a love letter to place. A place in time. A city. A self. Many selves and the freedom to be found in the recognition that we are never the same person when we go to sleep as we are when we wake up. This book is a love letter to the transformational power of dreams, of time, of memory, of life and of love.

At the heart of all of the poems in this collection is a certain feeling of longing. A universal sentiment experienced by everyone, but especially by those who usually are identified as seekers, artists, dreamers, lovers or poets. These poems long for people, places, moments, experiences that exist in the present, the past, and the future-as well as some that exist only in imagination. One of the most prevailing sentiments to be found in The Dinosaurs Are Orange in Seattle is that the human identity has a unique way of always changing while somehow retaining the essence of its beginnings. We are never truly that far from home.

"A dreamy collection of brutally honest versus spills from this poet's innards and graces the pages for readers to lavish over and understand more about themselves. Each word pulls us closer to a fuller understanding of what it means to be human and live in a spiritual body while living in this corporeal world and this writer takes on the weight of that mission to bond with the reader in that way." Timothy Arliss OBrien

ry downey is a lifelong resident of the PNW. His published works: Flowers Leaning Toward the Sun in 2019 and The Dinosaurs Are Orange in Seattle in 2022.