Pulitzer Prize for Poetry

Kay Ryan is the winner of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for The Best of It: New and Selected Poems. Therefore it seems appropriate to post one of her poems!

We’re Building the Ship as We Sail It
The first fear
being drowning, the
ship’s first shape
was a raft, which
was hard to unflatten
after that didn’t
happen. It’s awkward
to have to do one’s
planning in extremis
in the early years -
so hard to hide later:
sleekening the hull,
making things
more gracious.

November Poet: Kay Ryan, Pt 4

One last poem from Kay Ryan!

The Elephant in the Room

It isn't so much
a complete elephant
as an elephant
sense --perhaps
pillar legs supporting
a looming mass,
beyond which it's
mostly a guess.
In any case, we
manage with relative
ease. There are just
places in the room
that we bounce off
when we come up
against; not something
we feel we have to
announce.

November Poet: Kay Ryan, Pt 3

Well Carol wanted a cheerful poem this week and I did try! Actually I suppose this could be cheerful - what do you think?

Here's an interesting 2008 interview from the Charlie Rose show. It features Kay Ryan and James Billington, the Librarian of Congress. Ryan's poetry has been compared to Marianne Moore and Emily Dickinson.  She mentions in the interview that she was recently compared to Robinson Jeffers and she liked the comparison because of the violence in his poetry. She says that Jeffers focuses on raptor claws and she'd like to think there are some claws in her work. I would say there are claws in her work. There are claws in this poem. 

Sheep in Wolves Clothing

Of all the unpleasant
affectations of soi-distant
wolves, the most unpleasant
is their teeth: blunt ruminant
sheep stumps built up
to something no one could
really kill with. Decorative
in the worst sense. An offense
to economy and outright
blasphemy in the context
of true wolf philosophy,
which states very clearly
that every bluff must
promote good. Which means
you eat what you've fooled:
all of Little Red Riding,
from her shoes to her hood.

Kay Ryan

November Poetry: Kay Ryan

So I was sitting here trying to decide what to post & I thought I'd post a poem. Then I came up with a very clever idea: I'll do a different poet each month and share their poems and information about them! Clever isn't it? Ok, maybe I need to get out more. Anyway I decided November would be Kay Ryan.

Kay Ryan is a California poet, born in San Jose and currently living in Marin County. In 2008 she became the 16th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress and held the post until May of this year. I like her poetry a lot. It's funny, serious and witty. She packs a lot into mostly short poems. They are easy to remember but often require multiple reading to get the point. This is one of my favorites. Mellifera (the most beautiful cat in the world) was sitting on my lap so I read it to her. I'm sorry to say she was unimpressed although it mentions cats.

A Cat/A Future

A cat can draw
the blinds
behind her eyes
whenever she
decides. Nothing
alters in the stare
itself but she's
not there. Likewise
a future can occlude:
still sitting there,
doing nothing rude.

Poetry Day

Kay Ryan was recently appointed the 16th Poet Laureate of the United States. The official title is Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry. The Librarian of Congress, in consultation with poetry critics and the current Poet Laureate and former appointees, chooses the Poet Laureate for a one-year term which runs from October-May. During their term, the Poet Laureate seeks to increase public awareness of poetry.

Ryan was born in 1945 in San Jose, CA, and grew up in the San Joaquin Valley and the Mojave Desert. She currently lives in Marin County and teaches at College of Marin in Kentfield. Her books of poetry include, Elephant Rocks, Say Uncle and The Niagara River.

Kay Ryan on poetry: "Poems are transmissions from the depths of whoever wrote them to the depths of the reader. To a greater extent than with any other kind of reading, the reader of a poem is making that poem, is inhabiting those words in the most personal sort of way. That doesn’t mean that you read a poem and make it whatever you want it to be, but that it’s operating so deeply in you, that it is the most special kind of reading."

Which means that while I liked these three poems because they spoke strongly to me, they may leave you cold. But I hope not.


A Cat/A Future

A cat can draw
the blinds
behind her eyes
whenever she
decides. Nothing
alters in the stare
itself but she's
not there. Likewise
a future can occlude:
still sitting there,
doing nothing rude.

Things Shouldn't Be So Hard

A life should leave
deep tracks:
ruts where she
went out and back
to get the mail
or move the hose
around the yard;
where she used to
stand before the sink,
a worn-out place;
beneath her hand
the china knobs
rubbed down to
white pastilles;
the switch she
used to feel for
in the dark
almost erased.
Her things should
keep her marks.
The passage
of a life should show;
it should abrade.
And when life stops,
a certain space—
however small —
should be left scarred
by the grand and
damaging parade.
Things shouldn't
be so hard.

Say Uncle
Every day
you say,
Just one
more try.
Then another
irrecoverable
day slips by.
You will
say ankle,
you will
say knuckle;
why won't
you why
won't you
say uncle?