Kay Ryan

Infobox Writer
name = Kay Ryan


imagesize = 180px
birthdate = Birth year and age|1945
birthplace = San Jose, California, USA
occupation = Poet, educator
nationality = United States
period = 1970s-present
genre =
subject =
movement =
notableworks =
spouse = Carol Adair (2008-present)
influences =
influenced =
awards =


website =
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Kay Ryan (born 1945) is an American poet and educator. She is the sixteenth Poet Laureate of the United States.cite web | last=Raymond | first=Matt |coauthors=Urschel, Donna | title=Librarian of Congress Appoints Kay Ryan Poet Laureate | url=http://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2008/08-127.html | publisher=The Library of Congress | date=17 July 2008 |archiveurl=http://www.webcitation.org/5ZOuDTVzW |archivedate=2008-07-18 ]

Biography

Ryan was born in San Jose, California and was raised in several areas of the San Joaquin Valley and the Mojave Desert.cite interview | subject=Kay Ryan | title=Kay Ryan Discusses New Collection of Poems | url=http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/entertainment/july-dec06/poetry_07-26.html | format=Video/Transcript | program="Newshour with Jim Lehrer" | callsign=PBS | date=26 July 2006 | |accessdate=2008-07-18 ] After attending Antelope Valley College, she received bachelor's and master's degrees in English from University of California, Los Angeles. [cite web|title=Kay Ryan, UCLA graduate in English, named 16th poet laureate of U.S. |last=Hewitt |first=Alison |date=2008-07-17 |url=http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/poet-laureate-53591.aspx |publisher=UCLA |accessdate=2008-09-12 Ryan received her B.A. in 1967 and her M.A. in 1968.] Since 1971, she has lived in Fairfax, California, and has taught English part-time at the College of Marin in Kentfield. [cite news | last=Cohen |first=Patricia | title=Kay Ryan, Outsider With Sly Style, Named Poet Laureate | url=http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/17/books/17poet.html?ex=1374120000&en=a5a5e18fb6a6d6c9&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink | work=The New York Times | date=17 July 2008 | accessdate=2008-07-18] She has lived with her partner Carol Adair since the late 1970s.cite news | last=Halstead |first=Richard | title=Kay Ryan rises to the top despite her refusal to compromise | url=http://www.marinij.com/ci_6975060 | work=Marin Independent Journal | date=September 23, 2007 | accessdate=2008-07-18 ]

Ryan published her sixth collection of poetry, "The Niagara River", in 2005. Her first collection, "Dragon Acts to Dragon Ends", was privately published in 1983 with the help of friends. [Ryan told Richard Halstead ("Marin Independent Journal", 2007) that, "There is a certain onus on publishing one's own book. So, I wasn't terribly proud to be doing that. It was the act of a desperate woman, and it did me not a shred of good."] While she found a commercial publisher for her second collection, "Strangely Marked Metal" (1985), her work went nearly unrecognized until the mid 1990s, when some of her poems were anthologized and the first reviews in national journals were published.cite journal | last=Gioia | first=Dana | title=Review: Discovering Kay Ryan | journal=The Dark Horse | issue=no. 7 | month=Winter | year=1998-99 | url=http://www.danagioia.net/essays/eryan.htm | accessdate=2008-07-18 ] She became widely recognized following her receipt of the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize in 2004.

In July, 2008, the U.S. Library of Congress announced that Ryan would be the sixteenth Poet Laureate of the United States for a one year term commencing in Autumn 2008. She succeeds Charles Simic.

Poetry

The Poetry Foundation's website has characterized Ryan's poems as follows: "Like Emily Dickinson and Marianne Moore before her, Ryan delights in quirks of logic and language and teases poetry out of the most unlikely places. She regards the 'rehabilitation of clichés,' for instance, as part of the poet’s mission. Characterized by subtle, surprising rhymes and nimble rhythms, her compact poems are charged with sly wit and off-beat wisdom." [cite web | title=Kay Ryan (1945- ) | url=http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=80608 | publisher=Poetry Foundation | year=2008 | accessdate=2008-07-18] J. D. McClatchy included Ryan in his 2003 anthology of contemporary American poetry.cite book|last=McClatchy |first=J. D. |title=The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry:Second Edition |year=2003 |publisher=Vintage Books |chapter=Kay Ryan |page=530 |isbn=1400030955 McClatchy included the following poems in this anthology: "Paired Things", "Mirage Oases", "A Cat/A Future", "The Old Cosmologists", "That Will to Divest", and "Drops in the Bucket".] He wrote in his introduction, "Her poems are compact, exhilarating, strange affairs, like Satie miniatures or Cornell boxes. ... There are poets who start with lived life, still damp with sorrow or uncertainty, and lead it towards ideas about life. And there are poets who begin with ideas and draw life in towards their speculations. Marianne Moore and May Swenson were this latter sort of artist; so is Kay Ryan." Ryan's "Mirage Oases" is one of the six poems that McClatchy selected:quote
Mirage Oases:First among places:susceptible to trespass:are mirage oases

:whose graduated pools:and shaded grasses, palms:and speckled fishes give:before the lightest pressure:and are wrecked.

:For they live:only in the kingdom:of suspended wishes,

:thrive only at our pleasure:checked.|Kay Ryan, 1997cite book | last=Ryan | first=Kay | title=Elephant Rocks | chapter=Mirage Oases | page=3 | location=New York | publisher=Grove Press | year=1997 | isbn=0802115861 |url=http://books.google.com/books?id=DDo1yct_UlQC |accessdate=2008-07-21]

Ryan and the short poem

Ryan's poems are often quite short. In one of the first essays on Ryan, Dana Gioia wrote about this aspect of her poetry. "Ryan reminds us of the suggestive power of poetry–how it elicits and rewards the reader’s intellect, imagination, and emotions. I like to think that Ryan’s magnificently compressed poetry – along with the emergence of other new masters of the short poem like Timothy Murphy and H.L. Hix and the veteran "maestri" like Ted Kooser and Dick Davis – signals a return to concision and intensity." Gioia illustrated his essay with Ryan's poem, "Paired Things":quote|Paired Things:Who, who had only seen wings,:could extrapolate the:skinny sticks of things:birds use for land,:the backward way they bend,:the silly way they stand?:And who, only studying:birdtracks in the sand,:could think those little forks:had decamped on the wind?:So many paired things seem odd.:Who ever would have dreamed:the broad winged raven of despair:would quit the air and go:bandylegged upon the ground,:a common crow?
Kay Ryan, 1994 [cite book | last=Ryan | first=Kay | title=Flamingo Watching | chapter=Paired Things | page= | location=Providence | publisher=Copper Beech Press | year=1994 | isbn=0914278649 |chapterurl=http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=180967 |accessdate=2008-08-15]

Influences and affinities

Many reviewers have noted an affinity between Ryan's poetry and Marianne Moore's. Charlotte Muse suggests a comparative reading of "Mirage Oases" and Moore's "By Disposition of Angels".cite web |last=Muse |first=Charlotte |year=1999 |month=Autumn |title=Review: "Elephant Rocks" by Kay Ryan |work=The Able Muse |url=http://www.ablemuse.com/premiere/cmuse_review.htm |archiveurl=http://web.archive.org/web/20000901075329/http://www.ablemuse.com/premiere/cmuse_review.htm |archivedate=2000-09-01 ] quote
By Disposition of Angels:Messengers much like ourselves? Explain it.:Steadfastness the darkness makes explicit?:Something heard most clearly when not near it?::Above particularities,:These unparticularities praise cannot violate.::One has seen, in such steadiness undeflected,::How by darkness a star is perfected.

:Star that does not ask me if I see it?:Fir that would not wish me to uproot it?:Speech that does not ask me if I hear it?::Mysteries expound mysteries.:Steadier than steady, star dazzling me, live and elate,::no need to say, how like some we have known; too like her,::too like him, and a-quiver forever.|Marianne Moore, 1945 [cite book|last=Moore |first=Marianne |title=The Poems of Marianne Moore|coauthors=Schulman, Grace |year=2003 |chapter=By Disposition of Angels |page=275 |publisher=Penguin Books |isbn=014303908]

In addition to the oft-remarked affinity with Moore, affinities with poets May Swenson, Stevie Smith, Wendy Cope, and Amy Clampitt have been noted by some critics. Thus Katha Pollitt wrote that Ryan's fourth collection, "Elephant Rocks" (1997), is "Stevie Smith rewritten by William Blake" but that "Say Uncle" (2000) "is like a poetical offspring of George Herbert and the British comic poet Wendy Cope."cite web |last=Pollitt |first=Katha |date=November 8, 2000 |title=Shaking New Meanings Out of Worn Phrases |work=Slate.com |url=http://www.slate.com/id/2000213/ |accessdate=2008-07-25] Another reviewer of "Say Uncle" (2000) wrote of Ryan, "Her casual manner and nods to the wisdom tradition might endear her to fans of A. R. Ammons or link her distantly to Emily Dickinson. But her tight structures, odd rhymes and ethical judgments place her more firmly in the tradition of Marianne Moore and, latterly, Amy Clampitt." [cite web | author=PW staff writers | title=Review: "Say Uncle", Ryan, Kay (Author) | url=http://reviews.publishersweekly.com/bd.aspx?isbn=0802137172&pub=pw | archiveurl=http://web.archive.org/web/20070311014652/http://reviews.publishersweekly.com/bd.aspx?isbn=0802137172&pub=pw| work=Publishers' Weekly | date=24 July 2000 | archivedate=2007-03-11 | accessdate=2008-07-18]

Lightness and seriousness

Ryan's "wit", "quirkiness", and "slyness" are often noted by reviewers of her poetry, but Jack Foley emphasizes her essential seriousness. In his review of "Say Uncle" he writes, "There is, in short, far more darkness than "light" in this brilliant, limited volume. Kay Ryan is a serious poet writing serious poems, and she resides on a serious planet (a word she rhymes with "had it"). Ryan can certainly be funny, but it is rarely without a sting." [cite web |title=Kay Ryan, "Say Uncle" |last=Foley |first=Jack |work=The Alsop Review |date= |accessdate=2008-08-14 |url=http://www.alsopreview.com/columns/foley/jlkayryan.html ] Some of these disjoint qualities in her work are illustrated by her poem "Outsider Art", which Harold Bloom selected for the anthology "The Best of the Best American Poetry 1988-1997":quote
Outsider Art:Most of it’s too dreary:or too cherry red.:If it’s a chair, it’s:covered with things:the savior said:or should have said—:dense admonishments:in nail polish:too small to be read.:If it’s a picture,:the frame is either:burnt matches glued together:or a regular frame painted over:to extend the picture. There never:seems to be a surface equal:to the needs of these people. :Their purpose wraps:around the backs of things:and under arms;:they gouge and hatch:and glue on charms:till likable materials–:apple crates and canning funnels–:lose their rural ease. We are not:pleased the way we thought:we would be pleased. | Kay Ryan, 1997 [cite book | last=Ryan | first=Kay | chapter=Outsider Art | title=Elephant Rocks | publisher=Grove Press | year=1997 | isbn=0802135250 | chapterurl=http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=172274 | accessdate=2008-07-18 See also the article Outsider Art.]

Honors and awards

Ryan's awards include a 1995 award from the Ingram Merrill Foundation,the 2000 Union League Poetry Prize, [cite news | title=Poetry Prizes: The Union League Civic and Arts Poetry Prize | url=http://www.poetrymagazine.org/about/prizes.html | work=Poetry | year=2008 | accessdate=2008-07-18 See also the Union League article.] the 2001 Maurice English Poetry Award,a fellowship in 2001 from the National Endowment for the Arts, [cite paper | last=Mason | first=Eileen B. | title=2001 Annual Report: Individual Fellowships | url=http://www.nea.gov/about/01Annual/individuals.pdf | pages=p. 31 | format=.PDF | publisher=National Endowment for the Arts | year=2001 | accessdate=2008-07-18] a 2004 Guggenheim Fellowship, and the 2004 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. Her poems have been included in three Pushcart Prize anthologies, [cite book |last=Ryan |first=Kay |editor=Henderson, Bill |title=The Pushcart Prize XXI: Best of the Small Presses, 1997 Edition |year=1997 |publisher=Pushcart Press | location=Wainscott, NY | page=44 |isbn=0916366960 |chapter=Crib |chapterurl=http://books.google.com/books?id=DDo1yct_UlQC&pg=PA14&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=0_0&sig=ACfU3U138qq0S8T8ZB8r9Q3umG1dLp48OA#PPA16,M1 | accessdate=2008-07-21] [cite book | last=Ryan |first=Kay | editor=Henderson, Bill | title=The Pushcart Prize XXII: Best of the Small Presses, 1998 Edition | year=1998 | publisher=Pushcart Press | location=Wainscott, NY | page=152 | isbn=978-1888889079 |chapter=Living with Stripes |chapterurl= http://books.google.com/books?id=DDo1yct_UlQC&pg=PA1&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=0_0&sig=ACfU3U1SpVZT4xcsHid3qNlRBp62aCR50A |accessdate=2008-07-21 ] [cite book |last=Ryan |first=Kay |editor=Henderson, Bill |title=The Pushcart Prize XXIX: Best of the Small Presses, 2005 Edition |year=2004 |publisher=Pushcart Press | location=Wainscott, NY | isbn=978-1888889390 |chapter=Chinese Foot Chart |chapterurl=http://www.enotes.com/poetry-journals/110229761 |accessdate=2008-07-21] and have been selected four times for "The Best American Poetry"; [cite book |last=Ryan |first=Kay |editor=Lehman, David and Howard, Richard |title=The Best American Poetry 1995 |year=1995 |publisher=Scribners |chapter=Outsider Art |chapterurl=http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=172274 |pages= |isbn=978-0684801513] [cite book |last=Ryan |first=Kay |editor=Lehman, David and Bly, Robert |title=The Best American Poetry 1999 |year=1999 |publisher=Scribners |chapter=That Will to Divest |pages= |isbn=] [cite book |last=Ryan |first=Kay |editor=Lehman, David and Muldoon, Paul |title=The Best American Poetry 2005 |year=2005 |publisher=Scribners |chapter=Home to Roost |chapterurl=http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20197 |pages= |isbn=] [cite book |last=Ryan |first=Kay |editor=Lehman, David and Collins, Billy |title=The Best American Poetry 2006 |year=2006 |publisher=Scribners |chapter=Thin |pages= |isbn=] "Outsider Art" was selected by Harold Bloom for "The Best of the Best American Poetry 1988-1997". Since 2006, Ryan has served as one of fourteen Chancellors of The Academy of American Poets. [cite web |url=http://www.poets.org/page.php/prmID/34 |title=Chancellors of the Academy of American Poets |accessdate=2008-07-21 |publisher=Academy of American Poets]

Poetry collections

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References

External links

*cite web |url=http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ryan/ |title=Kay Ryan: Online Resources |accessdate=2008-07-21 |publisher=The Library of Congress
*cite web |url=http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/352 |title=Kay Ryan |accessdate=2008-07-21 |publisher=Academy of American Poets Profile, Poems, Audio, and Video.
*cite web |url=http://www.nea.gov/features/writers/writersCMS/writer.php?id=01_22 |title=Writers' Corner: Kay Ryan |accessdate=2008-07-21 |publisher=National Endowment for the Arts Short biography, author's statement, and two poems "Blandeur" and "Waste".
*cite web |url=http://www.poetrymagazine.org/search_author.html?query=80608 |title=Search Results: Kay Ryan |accessdate=2008-07-21 |publisher="Poetry" Magazine Listing of poems and writings in the magazine "Poetry", with links to some of them.
*cite web |url=http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=80608 |title=Archive: Kay Ryan (1945- ) |accessdate=2008-07-21 |publisher=The Poetry Foundation The webpage has a short profile of Ryan, and links to some of her poetry and prose.
*cite journal |last=Haven |first=Cynthia L. |year=2004 |month=October |title=Let There Be Lightness: Poet Kay Ryan knows what the world needs now |journal=San Francisco Magazine |url=http://www.sanfranmag.com/story/let-there-be-lightness |accessdate=2008-07-21
*cite news |first=David |last=Kirby |title='The Niagara River: Poems,' by Kay Ryan: The Biggest Little Poems |url=http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/18/books/review/18kirby.html |publisher="The New York Times" |date=December 18, 2005 |accessdate=2008-07-21
*cite news |first=Elizabeth |last=Lund |title=Poet Kay Ryan: A profile |url=http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0825/p25s01-bogn.html |publisher="The Christian Science Monitor" |date=August 25, 2004 |accessdate=2008-07-21
*cite web |url=http://www.baymoon.com/~ariadne/poets/kay.ryan.htm |title=The Poetry of Kay Ryan |accessdate=2008-07-21 |last=Zimmerman |first=Joan Webpage with details on each of Ryan's volumes.