Kay Ryan

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Kay Ryan is an American poet and educator born in San Jose, California in 1945. She grew up in California's San Joaquin Valley. She received both bachelor's and master's degrees from University of California, Los Angeles. Since 1971, she has lived in Marin County in California and has taught English at the College of Marin, Kentfield, California.^[1] Commencing with her first collection in 1983, by 2006 she had published 6 collections of poetry.

Contents 1 Poetry 2 Awards 3 References 4 Poetry Collections 5 External links

[edit] Poetry

The anonymous author at The Poetry Foundation's website ^[2] 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." A review of her collection, Elephant Rocks, noted that "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."^[3]

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."^[4]

Ryan's poem, "Outsider Art"^[5] illustrates both the wit and the compression of her art; the last ten lines of the poem read:

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.

[edit] Awards

Ryan's awards include the 2004 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, a 2004 Guggenheim Fellowship, an Ingram Merrill Award, a fellowship in 2001 from the National Endowment for the Arts,^[6] the 2000 Union League Poetry Prize,^[7] and the Maurice English Poetry Award. ^[8] Her poems have been included in three Pushcart Prizes anthologies, ^[9] and have been selected four times for The Best American Poetry (1995, 1997, 2005, and 2006); ^[10] "Outsider Art" was selected for The Best of the Best American Poetry 1988-1997. Ryan was elected a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets in 2006.

[edit] References

1. ^ Ryan, Kay (2006). Transcript of remarks on "The Newshour," broadcast on July 26, 2006.
2. ^ Poetry Foundation archive webpage.
3. ^ Review of Elephant Rocks, Publishers' Weekly, July 24, 2000.
4. ^ Gioia, Dana (1999). "Discovering Kay Ryan," The Dark Horse No. 7, Winter 1998-99.
5. ^ Ryan, K. (1997). Elephant Rocks (Grove Press, New York). See also the article Outsider Art.
6. ^ "2001 Individual Fellowships," National Endowment for the Arts website, retrieved Nov. 10, 2006.
7. ^ The Union League Civic and Arts Poetry Prize is awarded annually to a young poet for a poem published in Poetry. See also the Union League article.
8. ^ The Maurice English Poetry Award is given annually to a poet over 50 years old to honor a distinguished book of poetry published in the previous calendar year. It was created and is administered by Helen W. Drutt English, Maurice English Poetry Award, 2222 Rittenhouse Square, Philadelphia PA 19103.
9. ^ "Chinese Foot Chart," from Niagara River, Pushcart Prize XXIX (2005); "The Slaughterhouse," from Elephant Rocks, Pushcart Prize XXI (1997); "Living with Stripes," from Flamingo Watching , Pushcart Prize XIX (1995).
10. ^ "Thin," from Poetry, reprinted in The Best American Poetry 2006; "Home to Roost," from Niagara River, reprinted in The Best American Poetry 2005; "The Will to Divest," from Say Uncle, reprinted in The Best American Poetry 1999; "Outsider Art," from Elephant Rocks, reprinted in The Best American Poetry 1995.

[edit] Poetry Collections

• Dragon Acts to Dragon Ends (Taylor Street Press, 1983).
• Strangely Marked Metal (Copper Beech Press, 1985). ISBN 0-914278-46-0.
• Flamingo Watching (Copper Beech Press, 1994). ISBN 0-914278-64-9.
• Elephant Rocks (Grove Press, 1997). ISBN 0-8021-3525-0.
• Say Uncle (Grove Press, 2000). ISBN 0-8021-3717-2.
• The Niagara River (Grove Press, 2005). ISBN 0-8021-4222-2.

[edit] External links

• Biography at the Academy of American Poets website. Retrieved October 15, 2006.
• Biography and poems at The National Endowment for the Arts website. Retrieved November 9, 2006.
• Listing of poems and writings in the magazine Poetry, with links to some of them, from the magazine's website. Retreived October 15, 2006.
• Poems by Ryan, and a short biography, at The Poetry Foundation's Archive website. Retrieved October 15, 2006.
• Cynthia L. Haven, "Let There Be Lightness," profile in San Francisco Magazine, October, 2004 issue.
• David Kirby, Review of The Niagara River in The New York Times, December 18, 2005.
• Elizabeth Lund, Profile of Ryan in The Christian Science Monitor, August 25, 2004.
• Joan Zimmerman, website with details on each of Ryan's volumes. Retrieved November 10, 2006.