Kay Ryan > Quotes

“It isn't ever delicate to live.”
― Kay Ryan

“The day misspent,
the love misplaced,
has inside it
the seed of redemption.
Nothing is exempt
from resurrection.”
― Kay Ryan, Say Uncle

“It’s hard not
to jump out
instead of
waiting to be
found. It’s
hard to be
alone so long
and then hear
someone come
around. It’s
like some form
of skin’s developed
in the air
that, rather
than have torn,
you tear.

"Hide and Seek”
― Kay Ryan, The Niagara River

“I have tried to live very quietly, so I could be happy.”
― Kay Ryan

“Not even waste/is inviolate./The day misspent,/the love misplaced,/has inside it/the seed of redemption./Nothing is exempt from resurrection.”
― Kay Ryan

“Action creates/a taste/for itself.”
― Kay Ryan

“It's important to have your private enjoyments because sometimes that's all we have.”
― Kay Ryan

“Failure: the renewable resource.”
― Kay Ryan

“A too closely watched flower/blossoms the wrong color./Excess attention to the jonquil/turns it gentian. Flowers/need it tranquil to get/their hues right. Some/only open at midnight.”
― Kay Ryan

“Gaps don't/just happen./There is a/generative element/inside them,/a welling motion/
as when cold/waters shoulder/up through/warmer oceans./And where gaps/choose to widen,/coordinates warp,/even in places/constant since/the oldest maps.”
― Kay Ryan

“If we have not struggled/as hard as we can/at our strongest/how will we sense/the shape of our losses/or know what sustains/us longest or name/what change costs us,/saying how strange/it is that one sector/of the self can step in/for another in trouble,/how loss activates/a latent double, how/we can feed/as upon nectar/upon need?”
― Kay Ryan

“Forgetting takes space./Forgotten matters displace/as much anything else as/anything else. We must/skirt unlabeled crates/as thought it made sense/and take them when we go/to other states.”
― Kay Ryan

“CROWN

Too much rain
loosens trees.
In the hills giant oaks
fall upon their knees.
You can touch parts
you have no right to—
places only birds
should fly to.”
― Kay Ryan

“Tenderness and Rot

Tenderness and rot
share a border.
And rot is an
aggressive neighbor
whose iridescence
keeps creeping over.

No lessons
can be drawn
from this however.

One is not
two countries.
One is not meat
corrupting.

It is important
to stay sweet
and loving.”
― Kay Ryan

“In the hills giant oaks
Fall upon their knees
You can touch parts
You have no right to”
― Kay Ryan

“Bait Goat

There is a
distance where
magnets pull,
we feel, having
held them
back. Likewise
there is a
distance where
words attract.
Set one out
like a bait goat
and wait and
seven others
will approach.
But watch out:
roving packs can
pull your word
away. You
find your stake
yanked and some
rough bunch
to thank.”
― Kay Ryan, The Best of It: New and Selected Poems

“Even in climes/without snow/one cannot go/foward sometimes./Things test you./You are part of/the Donners or/part of the rescue:/a muleteer in/earflaps; a/formerly hearty/Midwestern farmer/perhaps. Both/parties trapped/within sight/of the pass.”
― Kay Ryan

“Weak Forces

I enjoy an accumulating
faith in weak forces--
a weak faith, of course,
easily shaken, but also
easily regained--in what
starts to drift: all the
slow untrainings of the mind,
the sift left of resolve
sustained too long, the
strange internal shift
by which there's no knowing
if this is the raod taken
or untaken. There are soft
affinities, possibly electrical;
lint-like congeries; moonlit
hints; asymmetrical pink
glowy spots that are no
the defeat of something,
I don't think.”
― Kay Ryan, The Niagara River: Poems

“A thing cannot be delivered enough times:
this is the rule of dogs for whom there are no fool's errands.
To loop out and come back is good all alone.
It's gravy to carry a ball or a bone.”
― Kay Ryan

“Ledge

Birds that love
high trees
and winds

and riding
flailing branches
hate ledges
as gripless
and narrow,

so that a tail
is not just
no advantage
but ridiculous,
mashed vertical
against the wall.
You will have
seen the way
a bird who falls
on skimpy places

lifts into the air
again in seconds --
a gift denied
the rest of us
when our portion
isn't generous.”
― Kay Ryan, The Best of It: New and Selected Poems

“The satisfactions/of agreement are/immediate as sugar--/a melting of the/granular, a syrup/that lingers, shared/not singular./Many prefer it.”
― Kay Ryan

“One can't work/by limelight.//A bowlful/right at/one's elbow//produces no/more than/a baleful/glow against/the kitchen table.//The fruit purveyor's/whole unstable/pyramid//doesn't equal/what daylight did.”
― Kay Ryan

“
Stardust is
the hardest thing
to hold out for.
You must make of yourself
a perfect plane-
something still
upon which
something settles-
something like
sugar grains on
something like
metal, but with
none of the chill.
It’s hard to explain.

Stardust”
― Kay Ryan, The Niagara River

“The Well or the Cup

How can
you tell
at the start
what you
can give away
and what
you must hold
to your heart.
What is
the well
and what is
a cup. Some
people get
drunk up.”
― Kay Ryan, The Niagara River

“WINTER FEAR

Is it just winter
or is this worse.
Is this the year
when outer damp
obscures a deeper curse
that spring can’t fix,
when gears that
turn the earth
won’t shift the view,
when clouds won’t lift
though all the skies
go blue.”
― Kay Ryan, The Best of It: New and Selected Poems

“No Names

There are high places
that don't invite us,
sharp shapes, glacier-
scraped faces, whole
ranges whose given names
slip off. Any such relation
as we try to make
refuses to take. Some
high lakes are not for us,
some slick escarpments.
I'm giddy with thinking
where thinking can't stick.”
― Kay Ryan, The Niagara River

“All Shall Be Restored

The grains shall be collected
From the thousand shores
To which they found their way,
And the boulder restored,
And the boulder itself replaced
In the cliff, and likewise
The cliff shall rise
Or subside until the plate of earth
Is without fissure. Restoration
Knows no half-measure. It will
Not stop when the treasure and lost
Bronze horse remounts the steps.
Even this horse will founder backward
To coin, cannon, and domestic pots,
Which themselves shall bubble and
Drain back to green veins in stone.
And every word written shall lift off
Letter by letter, the backward text
Read ever briefer, ever more antic
In its effort to insist that nothing
Shall be lost.”
― Kay Ryan, Elephant Rocks: Poems

“The dead do not
become stars or ghosts.
in fact, they are
hardly undone.
Soon their randomly
dispersed parts
reappear one
by one on
foreign hosts-
the beloved ear
or freckled arm,
separate as a
milagro or bracelet
charm. It is not
grotesque, though
odd. Even a piece
does us some good.

“Charms”
― Kay Ryan, The Niagara River

“The Self Is Not Portable

The self is not
portable. It
cannot be packed.
It comes sneaking
back to any place
from which it's
been extracted,
for it is nothing alone.
It is not an entity.
The ratio of self
to home: one part
in seventy.”
― Kay Ryan, The Niagara River

“To do it all
we must do it
too soon: shoot
before the moon
to shoot the moon,
we learn, having
shot it dead,
bagged now and
heavy as a head.”
― Kay Ryan, Erratic Facts