Say Uncle

by Kay Ryan

Filled with wry logic and a magical, unpredictable musicality, Kay Ryan's poems continue to generate excitement with their frequent appearances in The New Yorker and other leading periodicals. Say Uncle, Ryan's fifth collection, is filled with the same hidden connections, the same slyness and almost gleeful detachment that has delighted readers of her earlier books. Compact, searching, and oddly beautiful, these poems, in the words of Dana Gioia, "take the shape of an idea clarifying itself." "A poetry collection that marries wit and wisdom more brilliantly than any I know.... Poetry as statement and aphorism is rarely heartbreaking, but reading these poems I find myself continually ambushed by a fundamental sorrow, one that hides behind a surface that interweaves sound and sense in immaculately interesting ways." -- Jane Hirshfield, Common Boundary; "The first thing you notice about her poems is an elbow-to-the-ribs playfulness." -- Patricia Holt, San Francisco Chronicle.

Genres: Poetry, 20th Century, Contemporary

80 pages, Paperback

First published September 30, 1991

About the author

Born 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.

Reviews

[Vartika · Rating 3 out of 5]

My best friend gave me this book during our final months at university nearly two years ago. I remember reading all the poems in a single sitting, charmed by Kay Ryan's lightly adorned, rhythmic verse and the succinct brilliance of her words. I remember thinking how apt a book it was for the two of us to share, the poems gentle and weightless like our friendship, even while exploring realms that aren't always easy:

Among English verbs

Among English verbs
to die is oddest in its
eagerness to be dead,
immodest in its
haste to be told—
a verb alchemical
in the head:
one speck of its gold
and a whole life's lead.

Star Block

There is no such thing
as star block
We do not think of
locking out the light
of other galaxies.
It is light
so rinsed of impurities
(heat, for instance)
that it excites
no antibodies in us.
Yet people are
curiously soluble
in starlight.
Bathed in its absence of insistence
their substance
loosens willingly,
their bright
designs dissolve.
Not proximity
but distance
burns us with love.

I enjoyed the subtle wordplay in these poems, these tightly-arranged, rhythmic, compressed statements ranging from witty, charming, serious and delightful. I supposed that all of those qualities would make this a good book to pick back up for Christmas reading, and I was right. For instance:

The Fourth Wise Man

The fourth wise man
disliked travel. If
you walk, there's the
gravel. If you ride,
there's the camel's attitude.
He far preferred
to be inside in solitude
to contemplate the star
that had been getting so much larger
and more prolate lately—
stretching vertically
(like the souls of martyrs)
towards the poles
(or like the yawns of babies).

Quite what Christmas looks like this year!

My friend and I live in different cities and haven't met each other since we graduated, but we've only grown closer somehow. We both agree that having a fond memory makes the poems in Say Uncle glow even warmer and stick a while longer.

[Julie Ehlers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Say Uncle was Book Seven in my October 2021 poetry project, which got derailed due to the ridiculous busyness of my life last year. But I will catch up eventually! Anyway, this was a reread; I guess I wasn't too impressed with this the first time I read it, because I only gave it three stars. This time around, I loved it! The poems are fun and funny with some clever wordplay, but don't be fooled into thinking that's all they are: Kay Ryan has a lot to say and she expresses it wisely and well. Upgraded to five stars.

[Nadine in NY Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's always so refreshing to read Kay Ryan. Her poems are a short, sharp punch to the gut.

Ticket
This is the ticket
I failed to spend.
It is still in my pocket
at the fair’s end.
It is not only
suffering or grief
or even boredom
of which we are
offered more than
enough.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Of the collections I've read by Kay Ryan, I consider this her strongest work. A poet who is truly enjoyable to read and relish. As the writer Annie Dillard said, Ryan's work melds the music of language with the force of wisdom.

[Dan Gobble · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Kay Ryan's short, terse poems. They are filled with wit and insights that might ordinarily escape our attention. She has a way of taking an old saying or adage and infusing it with new meaning or subverting it to create a new edge for phrases we might tend to gloss over in ordinary conversation.

One of my favorites is "It's Always Darkest Just Before the Dawn"

But how dark
is darkest?
Does it get
jet - or tar -
black; does it
glint and increase
in hardness
or turn viscous?
Are there stages
of darkness
and chips
to match against
its increments,
holding them
up to our blindness,
estimating when
we'll have the
night behind us? (p. 34)

Another, "Why We Must Struggle"

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 changes 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? (p. 54)

[Sebastian · Rating 5 out of 5]

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

“Agreement”

Kay Ryan’s poetry—the sparseness, the sometimes eloquent vagueness—wasn’t always to my taste, but one poem in this collection, “Composition,” reveals the revelatory power of the writing process. The poem reacts to a quote by Joseph Brodsky: “Language is a diluted aspect of matter,” which I would have once said is a great way to characterize Ryan’s poetry (“diluted matter”); however, Ryan’s answer is a masterful delineation on how dilution must not be mistaken for expansion, that language is a catalogue of exploration:

Not diluted
(…) Language is matter
leafing like a book
with the good taste
of rust and exposure
(…) with so many more
colors than rust:
(…) a vast heraldic shield
of beautiful readable
fragments revealed
as Earth delaminates (…)

Sure, it’s silly to assume poetry is strictly autobiographical, but Ryan redeems language, i.e. her poetry to my stupid self, revealing words as a chemical reaction between elements, a poem like plotting an equation, rather than the childish game of mixing water and earth.

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.

“Closely Watched Things”

[laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

i've been wondering around seattle, and i've been trying not to buy too many books, because whatever i buy i have to carry on my own back all week, but i just picked up a new copy of this book at left end books down by the marker-- it's small, and i'd meant to pick up a new copy for so long, and there it was in a place i was content to leave some money.

i love this book. it contains, among other things, the first poem written in my own lifetime that i really loved. it contains, among other things, the sorts of insights that bring me up short- and in very few words. it contains, among other things, occasional little rhymes like hairpin turns. rereading these poems it feels like i'm leaning forward into them and being sometimes blown back.

five stars.

[Longfellow · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is fitting that I finish Say Uncle on my birthday, having tripped with some determination and some apathy a year deeper into middle age. The title poem:

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?

It’s a good question but also a good observation about how even the weakest-willed of us have demonstrated some kind of perseverance. It’s also a good example of the cleverness and thoughtfulness in this collection of poems.

I don’t read poetry often, but one of the reasons I’ve enjoyed reading Ryan’s Say Uncle is because the poems are short and can be consumed quickly, leaving more time to ponder the thoughts her poems evoke.

Though I certainly didn’t “get” every poem, I finished even the ones that left me puzzled with an appreciative “hmm.” But regardless of my comprehension, I always enjoyed the way Ryan uses poetic devices like alliteration, assonance, and rhyming in general. Though she uses these devices consistently, the overall sound and flow never become predictable.

I also fell in love with Ryan’s sense of humor. There are plenty of serious poems, but there are also plenty of selections that show the writer’s sense of fun with words. For example, after reading the title “Lime Light,” one is greeted by this stanza: “One can’t work / by lime light.” I cracked up. (As a reader, after finishing this first stanza there's also the uncertainty of whether the poet is referring to the fruit or the concept of "limelight," neither of which one can work by. I suppose separating the words is a give-away, but I wasn't thinking about this at the time.)

And then there’s this excerpt from “The Fourth Wise Man”:

The fourth wise man
disliked travel. If
you walk, there’s
the gravel. If you ride,
there’s the camel’s attitude.

(The bulk of the humor here is the imagined "fourth wise man" and the literal reference to the "camel's attitude," but I think part of it is also her break from the expected rhyme scheme. I love it.)

Other poems that jived with my sense of humor: the concluding line of “Agreement,” the perspective of “Blunt,” and the modest cynicism of “Great Thoughts” to name a few.

I love the positive outlook of “Ticket,” and another favorite is “Waste”:

Not even waste
is inviolate.
The day misspent,
the love misplaced,
has inside it
the seed of redemption.
Nothing is exempt
from resurrection.
It is tiresome
how the grass
re-ripens, greening
all along the punched
and mucked horizon
once the bison
have moved on,
leaning into hunger
and hard luck.

This one reminds me of the perspective I’ve read consistently from other writers like Wendell Berry and Eugene Peterson.

More of Kay Ryan is definitely on my agenda.

[Michaël Wertenberg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Plenty of bangers in this one.
My favourites are Star Block and Blandeur.

[Kevin Albrecht · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought my copy of "Say Uncle" last year when Kay Ryan came to San Francisco and gave a talk on her work. When I saw her speak, I had never really heard of her before, but left the talk totally impressed by both her work and her personality.

This book contains dozens of very short, but very poignant poems. She approaches topics from everyday life, but frequently through an almost scientific detachment. She totally removes herself from the poems and makes them universally appealing. She is the ultimate observer, able to comment on the topics in the poems without bringing preconceived notions about that topic, which lets the reader see each thing anew.

Ryan uses a technique she calls "recombinant rhyme", in reference to how the DNA of two different individuals or even species can be combined to create a chimera, or hybrid. She does a similar thing with words and parts of words, and while her poetry has little perfect rhyme, the same or similar sounds are found sprinkled around the poem, combined together to make new words. With all this "recombination", slant rhyme and other imperfect rhymes are very common. Her verse is fairly free, though there are still times when the reader can start to fall into a metrical pattern, only to immediately be derailed by an extra word or phrase. When I heard her talk about her work, Ryan said that she intentionally avoids overly metrical lines.

I wonder if these types of poems are perfect for the Twitter Age: short, witty poems that can be digested quickly but lead the reader to frequent "Ah ha!" moments. Interestingly, the common expression "say uncle" which is the title of this book, apparently comes from a British joke about a parrot.

---
My review of this book on my blog:
http://onlyafly.blogspot.com/2009/05/...

[Helen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kay Ryan's poems are short and plucky, full of zings and playful metaphors. The book starts out slow, with poems that don't always make sense and seem half finished, but as the book progresses we get gems like Herring, where "tiny silver thoughtlets" are likened to small fish.


Some of the best poems are those that offer a spin on religious ideology, like the poem about the fourth wise man, who was apparently an agoraphobic, and the animals who were excluded from the creche.

The thing that struck me most about these poems are how gender neutral they seem. If you didn't know Kay Ryan wrote them, and you didn't know that Kay Ryan is a woman, you wouldn't know they were written by a woman, or a man for that matter. There isn't any hint of who the writer is, no personality, no pieces of herself. And I can't decide if this is a good thing, or a bad thing.

[Josh · Rating 5 out of 5]

This delightful collection is immediately one of my favorite volumes of poetry-- in fact, the next time someone tells me they don't enjoy poetry, I think this is the book I'll recommend to change their mind. It's just a pleasure; Ryan's poems are like riddles, in a way, but not in the sense that they are difficult to decipher. On a purely sonic level they are just incredible-- I found myself savoring them aloud over and over. They are also very funny, sometimes almost moralistic or philosophical, other times simply observational, but always beautiful and warm and full of grace. Can't recommend this slim little volume enough, really.

[Aric · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had some exposure to Kay Ryan here and there, but this is the first full book of hers I've read, and I think it's safe to say that she is rapidly becoming my favorite living poet. I know it's the "easy" thing to say, but her minimal, compact form gives way to a lot of depth. That's just true, I don't know how else to describe it. Each poem is pretty perfect, the only downside here is that reading one after another can get a bit monotonous, she *only* writes in these minimal little forms, at least in this book.

[Nara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Blandeur

If it please God,
let less happen.
Even out Earth's
rondure, flatten
Eiger, blanden
the Grand Canyon.
Make valleys
slightly higher,
widen fissures
to arable land,
remand your
terrible glaciers
and silence
their calving,
halving or doubling
all geographical features
toward the mean.
Unlean against our hearts.
Withdraw your grandeur
from these parts.

[Christina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Charming, insouciant, funny and insightful. Her gentle way with rhyme is masterly. Wish I had read this delightful collection when it was first published 10 yrs ago and I, too, was using very short lines in my poems. It would have been both validating and inspiring. This is what I was trying to achieve.

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kay Ryan is very approachable as a poet...kind of like Billy Collins without his sense of humor or sweetness. Her poetry can have a cool edge to it, almost like the tellings of an aloof observer. Good, but not great.

[Holly Interlandi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Completely different from most poetry I read, but compelling all the same. She keeps her philsophy from being overly pretentious and trite.

[toulmin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first heard about Kay Ryan from a wonderful bookseller at Book Soup in West Hollywood (check it out, support local bookstores!). I was buying some Emily Dickinson, and the woman tells me I should read Kay Ryan if I like Dickinson. Let's be clear here, I don't like Dickinson... I LOVE Dickinson! I didn't need much selling after that, I knew Ryan's work would be in my hands soon enough.

And she was right, because Kay Ryan is FANTASTIC! As someone who only recently got SUPER DUPER REALLY VERY into poetry, her work is so ornate yet full of robust emotion that is easily translated from the page and into your heart and soul. She does indeed have a Dickinson-esque twinge to her work, brandishing extreme eloquence coupled with trials and tribulations of just about every element of life. Like Dickinson, her poems shine because they are so damn human.

My favorite poem was Death by Fruit, with Chemise coming in as a close second.

Definitely pick up some of Kay Ryan's work ASAP! It doesn't even have to be Say Uncle, all of her work is so incredible. I would definitely recommend reading her work alongside some Emily Dickinson, just for comparison's sake, and perhaps some Walt Whitman would lend an interesting hand, but I've yet to test that theory so don't quote me on it. Happy reading!

[Jenni Paulsen Buchanan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a lovely book that I want to read over and over. Kay Ryan's poems are beautiful in their simplicity. Each one is small, bite-sized, quick to read but long to mull over. Kay plays with language in a way that reminds me of other favorite poets of mine such as Wallace Stevens, e e cummings, and Gerard Manley Hopkins, but her subject matter and the way she looks at and relates to the world reminds me of Emily Dickinson (my favorite poet of all time). I would give a copy of this book to every person if I could. It's such an engaging, simple, thought-provoking book of poetry.

[S. Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Much of the imagery invoked in this volume pertains to nature, from stars and weather to plants and animals, something I'm not overly fond of in my poetry, but this is just personal preference and not an indictment of the author's poetic work. Other poems in the collection examine language and context, exploring the unspoken definition behind certain words and phrases, which is far more my speed. Altogether a pleasant book of poetry.

Personal favorites from this collection:

That Will to Divest
Grazing Horses
Beasts
Death by Fruit
Among English Verbs
Drops in the Bucket

[Morelia (Strandedinbooks) · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars!

Read this in one sitting!

I’ve never been one for poetry — don’t think I still am — but this is the kind that just went over my head. The reason why I’m not into poetry. Do I not have the sufficient brain cells?

While I did highlight some bits here and there, overall I didn’t feel attached. The word play is nice, but I think it takes a certain level of understanding to enjoy this and maybe I’m just not there yet

[Ridley Zarate · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm a bit of a poetry snob and that's no secret.
I had to read this for my poetry writing class and decided to count it towards my Goodreads goal.
This book says a whole lot of nothing
Most of the poems do not make sense whatsoever.
And maybe it's bc I am someone who wants to read things that I can understand and sometimes relate to.
But this book felt pretentious and was overall boring.

[Jaga · Rating 4 out of 5]

these were actually really fun to read

really unique style, some of the rhymes reminded me a lil of MFDOOM, really quite musical. that may be me making weird associations tho


(Mockingbrid
The Excluded Animals
Coming and Going
The Old Cosmologists
Herring
Death By Fruit
Crash
Beasts
& a bunch more)

[Sam Smiley · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars. While I quite enjoyed many of the poems in this collection. It did not feel to me as if there was a strong story being told. I felt more like it was a bunch of poems shoved together into a collection, without a narrative within.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Consistently entertaining and sharp in the way a poem should be. The lines throughout the book are terribly short, though, and I wondered if that made the book seem dated? Put this down as well worth the read in any case, and I expect at some point I'll pick up another book by this author as well.

[Kim · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5★
It's been awhile since I read poetry. Took a bit to find the rhythm. Some of the entries were thoughtful and crisp, others left me bewildered. Words grouped in certain ways touch you and inspire. Some leave you flat. I'm glad I picked this one up.

[Ray Nessly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Faves: Star Block, A Hundred Bolts of Satin, Blandeur, Grazing Horses, Diamonds, Herring, The Museum of False Starts, Drops in the Bucket, Chemise

[Andrew Mathis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kay Ryan makes you think you don't look at the world as closely at you should. Each poem turns your eye to a connection or realization she has seen before you.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

I dogeared these poems: "Blandeur," "Composition," "That Will to Divest," "Grazing Horses," "It's Always Darkest Before the Dawn," "Death by Fruit," "Among English Verbs."