"In one of the poems in this chapbook, Ricky Ray writes "living takes time, and I want you / to stay with me." It's just one tender, honest moment in this collection of deep, effervescent tenderness. Throughout The Sound of the Earth Singing to Herself, Ricky's poems ask the world to stay just a little longer. They admit, with grace, what they don't understand. They offer thanks. But what they do most singularly is care. Ricky's poems care about life, love, dogs, birds, gentleness, unknowing, wonder, and more. Poetry is a kind of witness, and each poem in this chapbook bears such gentle witness to this world, a world that sings and kills and births, all at once. They, as one poem states, "sneak a peak" even when the world's "too tender" to watch. What to do when the world is not enough? Read Ricky's poems. What to do when the yearning feels unbearable? Read Ricky's poems. What to do when you want to heal, even when healing feels impossible? Read Ricky's poems. To read this book is to learn, just a little bit better, how to live."
-Devin Kelly, author of In This Quiet Church of Night, I Say Amen (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2017) and Blood on Blood (Unknown Press, 2016)