POETRY
Kay Ryan: The Best of It
/ Aneesa Davenport
03.02.10
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Currently, as the Library of Congress’s sixteenth Poet Laureate, Kay Ryan is working on her poet laureate project, which by design is intended “to raise the national consciousness to a greater appreciation of the reading and writing of poetry.” In Ryan’s case, Poetry for the Mind’s Joy is an initiative through which she hopes to draw national attention to community colleges, as well as drawing the colleges’ attention to poetry, an appropriate endeavor for a poet who has avoided creative writing workshops entirely but taught basic English skills at a public two-year college for over thirty years. Teaching has helped her writing, specifically, her “metaphor-making.” She explained in an interview, “One of the most essential things for all teachers is that you have to develop the ability to create analogies… you have got to move a student from a condition of not understanding something to understanding it, and you’ll use anything you can… their skateboard…”
According to its website, the project “highlights poetry being generated on community college campuses, as well as the vital role played by community colleges in nurturing lives and minds.” Advantageously revealed just a few months after Obama announced a $12 billion community-college initiative, it includes a community college poetry contest administered by the Community College Humanities Association and a video conference open to the public on April 1, 2010.
In the meantime, however, Ryan and her publisher are working to satisfy expectant readers and capitalize on what seems to be the most publicity a poet can get short of translating The Inferno or dying. Her newest release, The Best of It, is a selection of 206 poems from her last four full-length books, as well as 23 new ones (all of which have been previously published in Poetry, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, etc.), and one early poem, possibly her first (dated 1965).
To discuss Kay Ryan’s most recent book is to discuss her entire body of work, and not only because the new book consists of mostly older poems. I was told once by an art school instructor that the reason Kay Ryan isn’t taught in college is because “she doesn’t change.” Reading almost two decades worth of her poems between two covers will show you this isn’t entirely true, but rather that Ryan has been whetting her craft all these years, perfecting the type of poems that she wants to write. They are like hard little diamonds, each brilliant but cut only slightly differently. Emily Dickinson too had a unique poetic style which she utilized again and again, perfecting with what some would call limited variation were she not so universally admired.
The Best of It does not include any poems from Dragon Acts to Dragon Ends (1983), Ryan’s first book, which donations from friends helped her self-publish, or Strangely Marked Metal (1985). The volume does, however, remove the need to buy the first two books it collects. Only three poems from Flamingo Watching (1994) are not included here, and these three are not just relatively long but—dare I say—wordy. Just five poems from Elephant Rocks (1996) are omitted. What these eight discarded poems have in common is an overabundance of examples, which readers will not miss. Many more poems from her two most recent books, Say Uncle (2000) and The Niagara River (2005), are excluded, including some of her best work. I recommend buying these two volumes separately, even at the loss of The Best of It.
Currently, as the Library of Congress’s sixteenth Poet Laureate, Kay Ryan is working on her poet laureate project, which by design is intended “to raise the national consciousness to a greater appreciation of the reading and writing of poetry.” In Ryan’s case, Poetry for the Mind’s Joy is an initiative through which she hopes to draw national attention to community colleges, as well as drawing the colleges’ attention to poetry, an appropriate endeavor for a poet who has avoided creative writing workshops entirely but taught basic English skills at a public two-year college for over thirty years. Teaching has helped her writing, specifically, her “metaphor-making.” She explained in an interview, “One of the most essential things for all teachers is that you have to develop the ability to create analogies… you have got to move a student from a condition of not understanding something to understanding it, and you’ll use anything you can… their skateboard…”
According to its website, the project “highlights poetry being generated on community college campuses, as well as the vital role played by community colleges in nurturing lives and minds.” Advantageously revealed just a few months after Obama announced a $12 billion community-college initiative, it includes a community college poetry contest administered by the Community College Humanities Association and a video conference open to the public on April 1, 2010.
In the meantime, however, Ryan and her publisher are working to satisfy expectant readers and capitalize on what seems to be the most publicity a poet can get short of translating The Inferno or dying. Her newest release, The Best of It, is a selection of 206 poems from her last four full-length books, as well as 23 new ones (all of which have been previously published in Poetry, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, etc.), and one early poem, possibly her first (dated 1965).
To discuss Kay Ryan’s most recent book is to discuss her entire body of work, and not only because the new book consists of mostly older poems. I was told once by an art school instructor that the reason Kay Ryan isn’t taught in college is because “she doesn’t change.” Reading almost two decades worth of her poems between two covers will show you this isn’t entirely true, but rather that Ryan has been whetting her craft all these years, perfecting the type of poems that she wants to write. They are like hard little diamonds, each brilliant but cut only slightly differently. Emily Dickinson too had a unique poetic style which she utilized again and again, perfecting with what some would call limited variation were she not so universally admired.
The Best of It does not include any poems from Dragon Acts to Dragon Ends (1983), Ryan’s first book, which donations from friends helped her self-publish, or Strangely Marked Metal (1985). The volume does, however, remove the need to buy the first two books it collects. Only three poems from Flamingo Watching (1994) are not included here, and these three are not just relatively long but—dare I say—wordy. Just five poems from Elephant Rocks (1996) are omitted. What these eight discarded poems have in common is an overabundance of examples, which readers will not miss. Many more poems from her two most recent books, Say Uncle (2000) and The Niagara River (2005), are excluded, including some of her best work. I recommend buying these two volumes separately, even at the loss of The Best of It.