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The Niagara River
In the citation accompanying Kay's recent award of the prestigious Ruth Lilly Prize, Christine Wiman wrote: "Kay Ryan can take any subject and make it her own. Her poems-which combine extreme concision and formal expertise with broad subjects and deep feeling-could never be mistaken for anyone else's. Her work has the kind of singularity and sustained integrity that are very, very rare…. It's always a dicey business predicting the literary future…[but] for this reader, these poems feel as if there were built to last, and…they have the passion, precision and sheer weirdness to do so."
Salon compared the poems in Ryan's last collection to "Fabergé eggs, tiny, ingenious devices that inevitably conceal some hidden wonder." The exquisite poems in The Niagara River provide similarly hidden gems. Bafflingly effective, they seem too brief and blithe to pack so much wallop. Intense and relaxed at once, both buoyant and rueful, their singular music appeals to many people. Her poems, products of an immaculately off-kilter mind, have been featured everywhere from the Sunday funnies to New York subways to plaques at the zoo to the pages of The New Yorker.
Salon compared the poems in Ryan's last collection to "Fabergé eggs, tiny, ingenious devices that inevitably conceal some hidden wonder." The exquisite poems in The Niagara River provide similarly hidden gems. Bafflingly effective, they seem too brief and blithe to pack so much wallop. Intense and relaxed at once, both buoyant and rueful, their singular music appeals to many people. Her poems, products of an immaculately off-kilter mind, have been featured everywhere from the Sunday funnies to New York subways to plaques at the zoo to the pages of The New Yorker.
- GenresPoetryNonfiction
72 pages, Paperback
First published August 17, 2005
13 people are currently reading
355 people want to read
About the author
Kay Ryan
35 books169 followersBorn in California in 1945 and acknowledged as one of the most original voices in the contemporary landscape, Kay Ryan is the author of several books of poetry, including Flamingo Watching (2006), The Niagara River (2005), and Say Uncle (2000). Her book The Best of It: New and Selected Poems (2010) won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.
Ryan's tightly compressed, rhythmically dense poetry is often compared to that of Emily Dickinson and Marianne Moore; however, Ryan’s often barbed wit and unique facility with “recombinant” rhyme has earned her the status of one of the great living American poets, and led to her appointment as U.S. Poet Laureate in 2008. She held the position for two terms, using the appointment to champion community colleges like the one in Marin County, California where she and her partner Carol Adair taught for over thirty years. In an interview with the Washington City Paper at the end of tenure, Ryan called herself a “whistle-blower” who “advocated for much underpraised and underfunded community colleges across the nation.”
Ryan’s surprising laureateship capped years of outsider-status in the poetry world. Her quizzical, philosophical, often mordant poetry is a product of years of thought. Ryan has said that her poems do not start with imagery or sound, but rather develop “the way an oyster does, with an aggravation.” Critic Meghan O’Rourke has written of her work: “Each poem twists around and back upon its argument like a river retracing its path; they are didactic in spirit, but a bedrock wit supports them.” “Sharks’ Teeth” displays that meandering approach to her subject matter, which, Ryan says, “gives my poems a coolness. I can touch things that are very hot because I’ve given them some distance.”
Kay Ryan is the recipient of several major awards, including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, and the Guggenheim Foundation. She has received the Union League Poetry Prize and the Maurice English Poetry Award, as well as the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. Since 2006 she has served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.
Ryan's tightly compressed, rhythmically dense poetry is often compared to that of Emily Dickinson and Marianne Moore; however, Ryan’s often barbed wit and unique facility with “recombinant” rhyme has earned her the status of one of the great living American poets, and led to her appointment as U.S. Poet Laureate in 2008. She held the position for two terms, using the appointment to champion community colleges like the one in Marin County, California where she and her partner Carol Adair taught for over thirty years. In an interview with the Washington City Paper at the end of tenure, Ryan called herself a “whistle-blower” who “advocated for much underpraised and underfunded community colleges across the nation.”
Ryan’s surprising laureateship capped years of outsider-status in the poetry world. Her quizzical, philosophical, often mordant poetry is a product of years of thought. Ryan has said that her poems do not start with imagery or sound, but rather develop “the way an oyster does, with an aggravation.” Critic Meghan O’Rourke has written of her work: “Each poem twists around and back upon its argument like a river retracing its path; they are didactic in spirit, but a bedrock wit supports them.” “Sharks’ Teeth” displays that meandering approach to her subject matter, which, Ryan says, “gives my poems a coolness. I can touch things that are very hot because I’ve given them some distance.”
Kay Ryan is the recipient of several major awards, including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, and the Guggenheim Foundation. She has received the Union League Poetry Prize and the Maurice English Poetry Award, as well as the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. Since 2006 she has served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 111 reviews
December 12, 2018
Simple yet deeply moving; resonates with the collective days we all share while we follow our individual paths.
March 4, 2009
I know, I know. Kay Ryan is the current U.S. poet laureate, which, in terms of street cred, is equivalent to your favourite little indie band winning a Grammy and licensing their songs to Volkswagen. It also doesn't help that she writes these itsy-bitsy poems that look, on the page, like W.C. Williams' discarded Post-it notes.
But once you take the (minimal) trouble to actually read her stuff, you discover that, under the girlish cuteness, there’s a very tough, very grown-up intelligence at work:
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.
Now, I’d never noticed the secret propinquity between tenderness and rot (had you?), but Ryan’s argument is oddly convincing. The clincher for me is that one bejewelled word, 'iridescence'. Yes, rot is iridescent, it suddenly occurs to you, as you visualize the greenish-blue scales on spoiled beef. And now she’s got you: if you accept her premise, however eccentric or metaphorical, you’ll stick around for her conclusion, as inevitable as the collection plate. She’s like Marianne Moore in that respect: you think, hey, that’s a weird flower, look at all the pretty, spiky things - and that’s when the trap closes over you with a sententious whack.
Because her poems constantly recycle the same basic ploy, she risks sounding like the brilliant stand-up comic whose set is nothing but a series of disconnected one-liners, all equally funny and all equally heartless. The phrase ‘one trick pony’ hovers irresistibly (though that’s precisely the sort of cliché she loves to ‘rehabilitate’). And despite her cleverness, she does come surprisingly close to platitude in a few places. Her least successful poems, with their high-class uplift, act as if they’re auditioning for a spot on the side of a Starbucks cup. But then, maybe cleverness and platitude share a border, too.
But once you take the (minimal) trouble to actually read her stuff, you discover that, under the girlish cuteness, there’s a very tough, very grown-up intelligence at work:
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.
Now, I’d never noticed the secret propinquity between tenderness and rot (had you?), but Ryan’s argument is oddly convincing. The clincher for me is that one bejewelled word, 'iridescence'. Yes, rot is iridescent, it suddenly occurs to you, as you visualize the greenish-blue scales on spoiled beef. And now she’s got you: if you accept her premise, however eccentric or metaphorical, you’ll stick around for her conclusion, as inevitable as the collection plate. She’s like Marianne Moore in that respect: you think, hey, that’s a weird flower, look at all the pretty, spiky things - and that’s when the trap closes over you with a sententious whack.
Because her poems constantly recycle the same basic ploy, she risks sounding like the brilliant stand-up comic whose set is nothing but a series of disconnected one-liners, all equally funny and all equally heartless. The phrase ‘one trick pony’ hovers irresistibly (though that’s precisely the sort of cliché she loves to ‘rehabilitate’). And despite her cleverness, she does come surprisingly close to platitude in a few places. Her least successful poems, with their high-class uplift, act as if they’re auditioning for a spot on the side of a Starbucks cup. But then, maybe cleverness and platitude share a border, too.
July 25, 2009
Prescription for reading this book: Read in a half-baked way, half-listening to your husband tell you about something-er-other, then leave on bedside table for, oh, six months or so. Then have insomnia for a month straight. Be in the middle of reading Good Morning, Midnight
but decide to read poetry instead. Then read this book at 2 a.m., and read it again right after. Then, because you still can't sleep, you'll be compelled to write this:
How does she do it? How does she manage to make my heart swell or sink or whatever hearts do when we're moved by art (has some scientist studied this? they ought.) in less than fifteen lines? There are only three to four words a line, for crying out loud. And at the end of those, what, 60 words, I feel like I've been punch in the gallbladder, like my head cracked open, like I'm a baby bird, like I might weep. It's like she boiled down entire novels into teacups, hard liquor shots, wheatgrass shooters.
The use of rhyme and linebreaks and double entendre is astonishing. It hurts.
but decide to read poetry instead. Then read this book at 2 a.m., and read it again right after. Then, because you still can't sleep, you'll be compelled to write this:
How does she do it? How does she manage to make my heart swell or sink or whatever hearts do when we're moved by art (has some scientist studied this? they ought.) in less than fifteen lines? There are only three to four words a line, for crying out loud. And at the end of those, what, 60 words, I feel like I've been punch in the gallbladder, like my head cracked open, like I'm a baby bird, like I might weep. It's like she boiled down entire novels into teacups, hard liquor shots, wheatgrass shooters.
The use of rhyme and linebreaks and double entendre is astonishing. It hurts.
March 14, 2009
Just beautiful. I don't know when was the last time I read a book of poetry but this one was just lovely and I'd recommend it to anyone the least bit interested in poetry or just the sound of language well-put together. Here's the poem that got me hooked into buying the book, in the first place:
Hide and Seek
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.
That poem just gives me goosebumps. . . And here's another favorite (one of many, since I've finished the book):
Ideal Audience
Not scattered legions,
not a dozen from
a single region
for whom accent
matters, not a seven-
member coven,
not five shirttail
cousins; just
one free citizen--
maybe not alive
now even--who
will know with
exquisite gloom
that only we two
ever found this room.
Hide and Seek
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.
That poem just gives me goosebumps. . . And here's another favorite (one of many, since I've finished the book):
Ideal Audience
Not scattered legions,
not a dozen from
a single region
for whom accent
matters, not a seven-
member coven,
not five shirttail
cousins; just
one free citizen--
maybe not alive
now even--who
will know with
exquisite gloom
that only we two
ever found this room.
April 28, 2020
Another one of Kay Ryan's books, which can be read in an afternoon. After Say Uncle, her strongest work in my opinion. Brief poems in the tradition of Emily Dickinson that make you think. Lighthouse Keeping may be one of Ryan's finest poems in any of her books. This book is easily recommended to all, either new to poetry or well-versed in it. The last poem of the book is also one of the few examples where she uses "I." And worth quoting.
GREEN BEHIND THE EARS
I was still slightly
fuzzy in shady spots
and the tenderest lime.
It was lovely, as I
look back, but not
at the time. For it is
hard to be green and
take your turn as flesh.
So much freshness
to unlearn.
GREEN BEHIND THE EARS
I was still slightly
fuzzy in shady spots
and the tenderest lime.
It was lovely, as I
look back, but not
at the time. For it is
hard to be green and
take your turn as flesh.
So much freshness
to unlearn.
September 14, 2014
She is ridiculously good. These queer little poems, which seem simple at times, reward close reading. She is so precise she can devastate or move or cheer with a single phrase.
January 11, 2017
I'm going to take it as an ironic commentary that a book with this many short poems is named after a long river. I found myself longing to hear this poet say more in this book.
March 1, 2019
I read this twice, three times if you count the poems I copied down in my notes. (Half the book.) The Salon quote in the description compares Ryan’s poems to Fabergé eggs, but I say that does them a disservice. I say they’re real eggs. Perfect, and delicate, yet made of stronger stuff than you’d think; crack one open and you get new life chirping or a meal for your bones.
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
the cup. Some
people get
drunk up.
February 14, 2020
This is my first time reading a collection by Kay Ryan and I am blown away. What incredible craft.
June 15, 2008
This is my 4th book of Kay Ryan's poetry. I could put it on my 'read' shelf and my 'currently reading' shelf. No other poet can put so much into so few words.
"We expect rain
to animate this
creek: these rocks
to harbor gurgles,
these pebbles to
creep downstream
a little,
. . .
but no rain yet."
"As though
the river were
a floor, we position
our table and chairs
upon it, eat, and
have conversation.
As it moves along,
we notice--as
calmly as though
dining room paintings
were being replaced--
the changing scenes
along the shore. . . ."
"We expect rain
to animate this
creek: these rocks
to harbor gurgles,
these pebbles to
creep downstream
a little,
. . .
but no rain yet."
"As though
the river were
a floor, we position
our table and chairs
upon it, eat, and
have conversation.
As it moves along,
we notice--as
calmly as though
dining room paintings
were being replaced--
the changing scenes
along the shore. . . ."
December 19, 2011
I have to return this book to the library without finishing it, it's due today. I love Kay Ryan's poetry and will continue to read her.
September 4, 2020
I just ran through these poems like it was a novel instead a collection of very short and distilled collections of words. I think the right way to read this for me might have been to read a poem and then look out into the distance for a few hours reflecting on each word and phrase very carefully to inspire novel trains of thought and learn deep truths about myself and the world around me. But I didn't do that. I liked that it wasn't directly focused on love and the tug of war in relationships. I liked that it was abstract enough to have an almost infinite number of interpretations. In retrospect it was the pointlessness that I appreciated the most and made me relate to it more as art than communicating anything useful.
October 2, 2022
I wanted to like it; I didn’t. The way rhyme is used throughout these poems is cringey imo. The only halfway decent poem was Sharks’ Teeth, and even in that case I would argue it still needs to be edited.
November 10, 2023
Kay Ryan is extremely extremely normal for a poet, so normal that it becomes weird again. Always a delight. I will never forget her bonkers Paris review interview. She’s so right. She’s right about everything.
January 7, 2019
SHARKS' TEETH
Everything contains some
silence. Noise gets
its zest from the
small shark's-tooth
shaped fragments
of rest angled
in it. An hour
of city holds maybe
a minute of these
remnants of a time
when silence reigned,
compact and dangerous
as a shark. Sometimes
a bit of a tail
or fin can still
be sensed in parks.
Everything contains some
silence. Noise gets
its zest from the
small shark's-tooth
shaped fragments
of rest angled
in it. An hour
of city holds maybe
a minute of these
remnants of a time
when silence reigned,
compact and dangerous
as a shark. Sometimes
a bit of a tail
or fin can still
be sensed in parks.
July 25, 2017
This was a pleasant collection of poetry written by a Poet Laureate. As I had said in the previous book I reviewed, a collection of Sappho's poetry, while I read a great deal of poetry growing up it has been a long time since I returned to those waters. Sappho's poetry spoke to me in a way I'd not been spoken to in some time - the meaning behind the poem fragments relatively easy to parse. The Niagra River was a different beast. While it wasn't as oftentimes vague and muddied as War of the Foxes was, the poetry was still a bit less accessible to me than I had found Sappho's to be.
I liked a great deal of the poems that I read here. In particular I found "Pitcher" and "Chinese Foot Chart" particularly evocative. I liked the title poem a great deal and the abundance of nature imagery within. The poetry was all very well written, but it lacked for me some of the express bluntness of Sappho's work and the wild burning urgency of Richard Siken's. Nevertheless, this is certainly a good read and a worthy one.
I liked a great deal of the poems that I read here. In particular I found "Pitcher" and "Chinese Foot Chart" particularly evocative. I liked the title poem a great deal and the abundance of nature imagery within. The poetry was all very well written, but it lacked for me some of the express bluntness of Sappho's work and the wild burning urgency of Richard Siken's. Nevertheless, this is certainly a good read and a worthy one.
July 15, 2013
A book of over 60 poems.
I feel a bit mixed. On the one hand, I think Ryan creates unique images from (extra)ordinary life things, a flow of words that's sometimes interesting and sometimes quite pretty. On the other hand, her poems - as a whole - didn't nestle inside of me in a way that makes me want to get another collection of her poems. It's hard for me to even say why. Still, a handful did work some magic for me:
p 21, Green Hills: "Their green flanks / and swells are not / flesh in any sense / matching ours, / we tell ourselves. / Nor their green / breast nor their / green shoulders nor / the languor of their / rolling over."
p 31, from Stardust: "Stardust is / the hardest thing / to hold out for."
p 32, from Repulsive Theory: "Praise then the oiled motions / of avoidance, the pearly / convolutions of all that / slides off or takes a / wide berth; praise every / eddying vacancy of Earth / all dimpled depths / of pooling space, the whole / swirl set up by fending off - / extending far beyond the personal, / I'm convinced - immense and good / in a cosmological sense: / unpressing us against / each other, lending / the necessary never / to never-ending."
p 36, Almost Without Surface: "Sometimes before / going to sleep a person / senses the give / behind the last given, // almost physically, / like the strain / of plush against / a skin. // The person imagines / a fig or peach, / perhaps a woman or / a deep constellation: / some fathomless / fruit. // But we are each / that, while we live, / however much / we resist: almost / without surface, barely / contained, // but crazy / as clouds compounding / each other, refusing / to rain."
p 40, from Things Shouldn't Be So Hard: "And when life stops, / a certain space - / however small - / should be left scarred / by the grand and / damaging parade."
p 43, Reverse Drama: "Lightening, but not bright. / Thunder, but not loud. / Sometimes something / in the sky connects / to something in the ground / in ways we don't expect / and more or less miss except / through reverse drama: / things were heightened / and now they're calmer."
I feel a bit mixed. On the one hand, I think Ryan creates unique images from (extra)ordinary life things, a flow of words that's sometimes interesting and sometimes quite pretty. On the other hand, her poems - as a whole - didn't nestle inside of me in a way that makes me want to get another collection of her poems. It's hard for me to even say why. Still, a handful did work some magic for me:
p 21, Green Hills: "Their green flanks / and swells are not / flesh in any sense / matching ours, / we tell ourselves. / Nor their green / breast nor their / green shoulders nor / the languor of their / rolling over."
p 31, from Stardust: "Stardust is / the hardest thing / to hold out for."
p 32, from Repulsive Theory: "Praise then the oiled motions / of avoidance, the pearly / convolutions of all that / slides off or takes a / wide berth; praise every / eddying vacancy of Earth / all dimpled depths / of pooling space, the whole / swirl set up by fending off - / extending far beyond the personal, / I'm convinced - immense and good / in a cosmological sense: / unpressing us against / each other, lending / the necessary never / to never-ending."
p 36, Almost Without Surface: "Sometimes before / going to sleep a person / senses the give / behind the last given, // almost physically, / like the strain / of plush against / a skin. // The person imagines / a fig or peach, / perhaps a woman or / a deep constellation: / some fathomless / fruit. // But we are each / that, while we live, / however much / we resist: almost / without surface, barely / contained, // but crazy / as clouds compounding / each other, refusing / to rain."
p 40, from Things Shouldn't Be So Hard: "And when life stops, / a certain space - / however small - / should be left scarred / by the grand and / damaging parade."
p 43, Reverse Drama: "Lightening, but not bright. / Thunder, but not loud. / Sometimes something / in the sky connects / to something in the ground / in ways we don't expect / and more or less miss except / through reverse drama: / things were heightened / and now they're calmer."
December 21, 2024
I enjoy Ryan's short, terse poems, packed with a punch! Several favorites from this collection:
"The Past"
Sometimes there's
suddenly no way
to get from
one part to
another, as though
the past were
a frozen lake
breaking up. But
not from the
top; not because
it's warmer
up here; it's not.
But from underneath
for some reason -
perhaps some heat
trapped on its own
for so long it's
developed seasons.
(p. 42)
And . . . "Least Action"
Is it vision
or the lack
that brings me
back to the principle
of least action,
by which in one
branch of rabbinical
thought the world
might become the
Kingdom of Peace not
through the tumult
and destruction necessary
for a New Start but
by adjusting little parts
a little bit - turning
a cup a quarter inch
or scooting up a bench.
It imagines an
incremental resurrection,
a radiant body
puzzled out through
tinkering with the fit
of what's available.
As though what is is
right already but
askew. It is tempting
for any person who would
like to love what she
can do.
(pp. 48-9)
And also, "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.
(p. 62)
And another: "Lighthouse Keeping"
Seas pleat
winds keen
fogs deepen
ships lean no
doubt, and
the lighthouse
keeper keeps
a light for
those left out.
It is intimate
and remote both
for the keeper
and those afloat.
"The Past"
Sometimes there's
suddenly no way
to get from
one part to
another, as though
the past were
a frozen lake
breaking up. But
not from the
top; not because
it's warmer
up here; it's not.
But from underneath
for some reason -
perhaps some heat
trapped on its own
for so long it's
developed seasons.
(p. 42)
And . . . "Least Action"
Is it vision
or the lack
that brings me
back to the principle
of least action,
by which in one
branch of rabbinical
thought the world
might become the
Kingdom of Peace not
through the tumult
and destruction necessary
for a New Start but
by adjusting little parts
a little bit - turning
a cup a quarter inch
or scooting up a bench.
It imagines an
incremental resurrection,
a radiant body
puzzled out through
tinkering with the fit
of what's available.
As though what is is
right already but
askew. It is tempting
for any person who would
like to love what she
can do.
(pp. 48-9)
And also, "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.
(p. 62)
And another: "Lighthouse Keeping"
Seas pleat
winds keen
fogs deepen
ships lean no
doubt, and
the lighthouse
keeper keeps
a light for
those left out.
It is intimate
and remote both
for the keeper
and those afloat.
September 15, 2008
Kay Ryan is dead on; economical; recurring themes remind you, she has been thinking and rethinking what are the only things to say that are true about self-preservation and comprehending Nature in a non-anthropocentric way - if that's possible. Some of my favorites from this collection (I'll let these clipped pieces speak for themselves):
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.
-
Hide and Seek
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.
-
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.
-
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.
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.
-
Hide and Seek
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.
-
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.
-
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.
February 23, 2016
I like this review I saw on the back of the book.
"Her poems are compact, exhilarating, strange affairs like Erik Satie miniatures or Joseph Cornell boxes. She is an anomaly in today's literary culture: as intense and elliptical as Dickinson, as buoyant and rueful as Frost." – J.D. McClatchy
Kay Ryan's poems are indeed compact and delightfully easy to read. Though she occasionally drops in a tri + syllabic word that has the effect of stopping the flow. Still I found them visual and intriguing. Some of the lines/stanzas that inspired me, as a poet/artist:
"Every part of us
alerts another part.
Press a spot in
the tender arch and
feel the scalp twitch..."
"...unnatural
bodies of water wedged
into canyons, stranded
anti-mirages
unable to vanish."
"Everything contains some
silence...
...An hour of city holds maybe
a minute of these remnants of a time
when silence reigned..."
"...something so odd and
filled with promise
for a minute
that you spend your only wish
wishing someone else
could see it."
"Rooms may be using us.
We may be the agents
of doorknobs
purposes..."
"...the light once in, bounces
toward the interior,
glancing off glassy
enamels and polishes,
softened by the scuffed
and often handled, muffled in
carpet and toweling,
buffeted down hallways..."
"Her poems are compact, exhilarating, strange affairs like Erik Satie miniatures or Joseph Cornell boxes. She is an anomaly in today's literary culture: as intense and elliptical as Dickinson, as buoyant and rueful as Frost." – J.D. McClatchy
Kay Ryan's poems are indeed compact and delightfully easy to read. Though she occasionally drops in a tri + syllabic word that has the effect of stopping the flow. Still I found them visual and intriguing. Some of the lines/stanzas that inspired me, as a poet/artist:
"Every part of us
alerts another part.
Press a spot in
the tender arch and
feel the scalp twitch..."
"...unnatural
bodies of water wedged
into canyons, stranded
anti-mirages
unable to vanish."
"Everything contains some
silence...
...An hour of city holds maybe
a minute of these remnants of a time
when silence reigned..."
"...something so odd and
filled with promise
for a minute
that you spend your only wish
wishing someone else
could see it."
"Rooms may be using us.
We may be the agents
of doorknobs
purposes..."
"...the light once in, bounces
toward the interior,
glancing off glassy
enamels and polishes,
softened by the scuffed
and often handled, muffled in
carpet and toweling,
buffeted down hallways..."
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 14, 2016
Superb.
This is a short book of short poems full of tension. Anticipation of tension, causes of tension, preliminary tension, increased tension, sustained tension, release of tension ... everything in this book is holding its breath, waiting to relax, but ... not ... quite ... there.
Since these are such short poems, you could easily read the book in one sitting, but I preferred to read just one or two poems a day, so that each one could punch me in the gut individually.
This is a short book of short poems full of tension. Anticipation of tension, causes of tension, preliminary tension, increased tension, sustained tension, release of tension ... everything in this book is holding its breath, waiting to relax, but ... not ... quite ... there.
THE OTHER SHOE
Oh if it were
only the other
shoe hanging
in space before
joining its mate.
If the undropped
didn't congregate
with the undropped.
Butnothing can
stop the midair
collusion of the
unpaired above us
acquiring density
and weight. We
feel it accumulate.
Since these are such short poems, you could easily read the book in one sitting, but I preferred to read just one or two poems a day, so that each one could punch me in the gut individually.
TUNE
Imagine a sea
of ultramarine
suspending a
million jellyfish
as soft as moons.
Imagine the
interlocking uninsistent
tunes of drifting things.
This is the deep machine
that powers the lamps
of dreams and accounts
for their bluish tint.
How can something
so grand and serene
vanish again and again
without a hint?
June 19, 2016
Kay Ryan’s poetry is deep without being overwhelming. Each poem is short, and even the lines within it are short – very readable and pithy. Most poems only occupy a single page and can be read several times and understood without spending a half an hour in deciphering them.
I love the way Kay Ryan plays with words and rhymes. Her poems don’t rhyme in the traditional sense, but she throws in rhyming words in unexpected places. The rhymes add emphasis; they catch the reader off guard. Some of her poems are deep and poignant. Others are rollicking and funny. My favorites take an ordinary image and relate it unexpectedly to something quite extraordinary. Here’s just a taste:
Hide and Seek
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.
*****
If you appreciated this review, check out my blog at pagesandmargins.wordpress.com
I love the way Kay Ryan plays with words and rhymes. Her poems don’t rhyme in the traditional sense, but she throws in rhyming words in unexpected places. The rhymes add emphasis; they catch the reader off guard. Some of her poems are deep and poignant. Others are rollicking and funny. My favorites take an ordinary image and relate it unexpectedly to something quite extraordinary. Here’s just a taste:
Hide and Seek
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.
*****
If you appreciated this review, check out my blog at pagesandmargins.wordpress.com
December 8, 2011
Poetry. Kay Ryan has a distinctive style. Narrow columns, sneaky rhymes, twisting sentences ripe with parentheticals, and a last line that makes you scroll your eyes back up to the beginning and read the whole thing again.
She deals in the absurd -- chickens coming home to roost, literally; that sort of thing -- and the everyday, often at the same time, and with a kind of removed, wondering tone that really works for me.
Some favorites: "Home to Roost," "Carrying a Ladder," "Atlas," "Tired Blood," "Stardust," "Things Shouldn't Be So Hard," "The Past," and "Fake Spots."
Four stars. Love the near and internal rhymes, and most of the subject matter.
She deals in the absurd -- chickens coming home to roost, literally; that sort of thing -- and the everyday, often at the same time, and with a kind of removed, wondering tone that really works for me.
Some favorites: "Home to Roost," "Carrying a Ladder," "Atlas," "Tired Blood," "Stardust," "Things Shouldn't Be So Hard," "The Past," and "Fake Spots."
Four stars. Love the near and internal rhymes, and most of the subject matter.
September 25, 2013
I love these poems. They're unlike any others in my pretty extensive poetry library. They're short, rarely flowing from one page onto another, and the lines are short as well, often just three or four syllables in length. I found the rhythm, and the occasional rhymes, jarring, but not unpleasantly so. Many of the poems end with a subtle twist, a line that forces the whole poem into sharper focus. These poems call for slow reading and then re-reading; I wanted to savor and remember them.
Some of my favorites in this volume are "Carrying a Ladder," "Sharks' Teeth," "Green Hills," "Ideal Audience," "Hide and Seek," and "The Well or the Cup." I hope you'll have a look at them for yourself.
Some of my favorites in this volume are "Carrying a Ladder," "Sharks' Teeth," "Green Hills," "Ideal Audience," "Hide and Seek," and "The Well or the Cup." I hope you'll have a look at them for yourself.
August 15, 2007
Compact poems, satisfying in their brevity and weird music/rhymes, as if no one's rhymed quite that way, quite like that before. Real wit and fresh turns on trite and familiar sayings/sentiments. She manages to evoke quite a bit with few strokes--at times they feel like sayings or aphorisms, perhaps a little too neat and tidy, though. A comparison to Cornell boxes is apt.
January 2, 2018
I recommend this book particularly to people who are new to poetry, who don't know how to approach it, and who need a tentative introduction to it. Ryan's tiny snippets--often only a couple sentences--combine well-crafted poetic techniques with accessible messages. The themes are familiar, or at least recognizable. The insights are charming and sometimes amusing.
April 24, 2009
Wonderful poems of small bits of light.
I heard Ryan read her poetry a few weeks ago. As is often true of good poetry, it sounds even better when read, but is delightful also to read in silence.
These are insights into humanity that it would be well worth the time to explore.
I heard Ryan read her poetry a few weeks ago. As is often true of good poetry, it sounds even better when read, but is delightful also to read in silence.
These are insights into humanity that it would be well worth the time to explore.
September 16, 2017
Excellent poems that leave you thinking.
March 10, 2022
I really liked this collection. What a way with words!
Rubbing Lamps is what I feel like reading this book. It contains so many gems, like The Elephant in the Room, where the elephant in the room becomes the elephant in the room.
Sitting on the couch staring into space in a post-covid stupor, the meaning of The Other Shoe suddenly came to me.
Some of the poems were so clear and easy to understand (Expectations, Least Action, Pitcher), while others were of the that's deep, but what does it mean variety. Home to Roost is yet a puzzle. I have not figured out what the chickens represent. I also have no clue about Tar Babies. Give me a few years.
My favourites were perhaps the poems about people (The Well or the Cup).
I want to encourage everyone to read the book, which is why I only mention the titles, but I will not copy any of the poems into this review. Instead, here is one I wrote myself. (Inspired, if nothing else...)
LEGO
I would love
to see
what Kay
Ryan builds
out of LEGO.
Rubbing Lamps is what I feel like reading this book. It contains so many gems, like The Elephant in the Room, where the elephant in the room becomes the elephant in the room.
Sitting on the couch staring into space in a post-covid stupor, the meaning of The Other Shoe suddenly came to me.
Some of the poems were so clear and easy to understand (Expectations, Least Action, Pitcher), while others were of the that's deep, but what does it mean variety. Home to Roost is yet a puzzle. I have not figured out what the chickens represent. I also have no clue about Tar Babies. Give me a few years.
My favourites were perhaps the poems about people (The Well or the Cup).
I want to encourage everyone to read the book, which is why I only mention the titles, but I will not copy any of the poems into this review. Instead, here is one I wrote myself. (Inspired, if nothing else...)
LEGO
I would love
to see
what Kay
Ryan builds
out of LEGO.
August 24, 2025
I started off the month with an ambitious project that was part of a poetry store promotion: read a book of poetry a day. Since so many (this one included) are slender, it seemed possible. However, after main-lining Ryan's beautiful poems, I realized this was a terrible idea - they are meant to be savored and pondered, especially in this languid late-summer month. This collection has some stand-outs: the title poem, for one, "Things Shouldn't Be So Hard" which is a thoughtful exploration of grief; "Tenderness and Rot" share a border states the first line; "Carrying a Ladder." Published in 2005, it is oddly prescient in its themes of impending doom, things not being what they appear, underlying currents of doubt and dis-ease -- maybe it was the newness of the millennium that accounts for some of that, but regardless, a quarter-century in, and those themes resonate. But there is hope too, especially in the meta sense that art gives us another way of seeing, interpreting, resisting.
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