Flamingo Watching

by Kay Ryan

Poetry. Kay Ryan's second book, nominated for the Lenore Marshall Prize in 1995. "An extraordinary book, one that penetrates to the bone. I cannot recommend it highly enough"--Jane Hirshfield.

Genres: Poetry

63 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1994

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

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kay Ryan's third book, which is the book that got her noticed by the poet and reviewer Dana Gioia and sent her on the way to becoming America's poet laureate in 2008. Ryan is the best poet writing today, in my opinion. She challenges her readers to think, but does so in a way that is accessible, witty, and intelligent. This is readable poetry that cuts to the chase.

[Ray Nessly · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Hit and miss" another reviewer said, and that was my experience as well.
My favorites include "Turtle", and "Paired Things", which are quoted in full in some of the other reviews. Here's my top favorite. It opens with an epigram by Chagall*

THE TABLES FREED

The presence of real objects is a nightmare for me. I have always overturned objects. A chair or a table turned upside down gives me peace and satisfaction.
--Chagall.

A companionable flood can
make things wobble. The
sober table at last enjoys
the bubbles locked in her
grain, straining together
good as Egyptians to shift
the predictable plane.
Dense plates and books
slide off and dive or bloat
but she floats, a legged
boat nosing the helpless
stationeries, the bolted
basin, the metal reliquaries––
in short, the nouns. All over
town tables are bumping
out of doors, negotiating
streets and beginning to
meet at water corners
like packs of mustangs,
blue, red, yellow, stenciled,
enlivened by swells as
wild horses are stretched
liquid and elegant by hills

*Speaking of 'Paired Things"--that title is revealing, because there are a number of paired poems in this collection. "The Tables Freed", above, is preceded by "Every Painting by Chagall", which mentions Chagall's tendency to pair subjects in his paintings: "Every twined groom and bride, every air fish, smudged Russian, red horse, yellow chicken, assumes its position not actually beside but in some friendly distribution with a predicable companionable." This idea is repeated in "the companionable flood" that frees the tables. Other pairings include subjects such as colors, animals, and some that are far less obvious.

[A.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have decided to work my way through the Pulitzer Poetry winners as part of my reading list for 2013 (and beyond), and Kay Ryan's Best of It: New and Selected Poems won the honor in 2011. Preferring the original, individual collections to "Best Of" compilations, I opted to start with Ryan's Flamingo Watching.

This is a short, readable book of poems that reveals Ryan's love of the written word - its sound, its imagery, its rhythm and rhyming potential.

Here is one of my favorites called "This Life," from Part I:

It's a pickle, this life.
Even shut down to a trickle
it carries every kind of particle
that causes strife on a grander scale:
to be miniature is to be swallowed
by a miniature whale. Zeno knew
the law that we know: no matter
how carefully diminished, a race
can only be half finished with success;
then comes the endless halving of the rest --
the ribbon's stalled approach, the helpless
red-faced urgings of the coach.

Quirky wording that's rife with wit and wisdom - that is how I would describe Ryan's poetry. The book is broken into three parts: I. Habitat and Range; II. Behavior; and III. Common Names. Her subject matter is primarily nature but also covers colors, artists and the habits of everyday individuals.

Here is another from Part I. called "The Things of the World":

Wherever the eye lingers
it finds a hunger.
The things of the world
want us for dinner.
Inside each pebble or leaf
or puddle is a hook.
The appetites of the world
compete to catch a look.
What does this mean
and how does it work?
Why aren't rocks complete?
Why isn't green adequate
to green? Why aren't gods
whose gaze could save,
but that's how the things
of the world behave.

[Side note: there is an underlying theme of hunger - of eating and being eaten - in both of these poems, a theme that I have been contemplating for some time now. Ouroboros. Samsara. The mechanism of the Ego's existence.]

I'll end this review with another interesting poem from Part III called "The Palm at the End of the Mind," an interesting interpretation of Easter and the resurrection:

After fulfilling everything
one two three he came back again
free, no more prophecy requiring
that he enter the city just this way,
no more set-up treacheries.
It was the day after Easter. He adored
the egg-shell litter and the cellophane
caught in the grass. Each door he passed
swung with its own business, all the
witnesses along the route of pain
again distracted by fear of loss
or hope of gain. It was wonderful
to be a man, bewildered by
so many flowers, the rush
and ebb of hours, his own
ambiguous gestures -- his
whole heart exposed, then
taking cover.

I really these poems and am excited to explore Ryan's other collections.

[Glen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I very much enjoyed this slender volume of nature-themed poems, largely I suppose because I found them accessible, playful, and full of that too oft-neglected tool in the poet's kit: rhyme. These poems are very much like songs in that, when read aloud, the internal rhyming structure and sibilant tuning of the word choice and pattern are easily noted and enjoyable, as in this poem entitled "The Things of the World":

Wherever the eye lingers
it finds a hunger.
The things of the world
want us for dinner.
Inside each pebble or leaf
or puddle is a hook.
The appetites of the world
compete to catch a look.
What does this mean
and how does it work?
Why aren't rocks complete?
Why isn't green adequate
to green? We aren't gods
whose gaze could save,
but that's how the things
of the world behave.

Sometimes Ryan's flair for the playful almost gets the best of her, as in this line from "Osprey" (though I dare you not to smile when you read it): "Her nest's the biggest/thing around, a spiked basket/with hungry ugly osprey offspring/in it," but I'd rather have her playfulness than the ponderous plodding petulance of poets who seem to resent their readers.

[Cyril Wong · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love this book mostly for a handful of poems, as well as this one ("Turtle"), which is quite possibly one of my favourites of all time:

Turtle

Who would be a turtle who could help it?
A barely mobile hard roll, a four-oared helmet,
She can ill afford the chances she must take
In rowing toward the grasses that she eats.
Her track is graceless, like dragging
A packing-case places, and almost any slope
Defeats her modest hopes. Even being practical,
She’s often stuck up to the axle on her way
To something edible. With everything optimal,
She skirts the ditch which would convert
Her shell into a serving dish. She lives
Below luck-level, never imagining some lottery
Will change her load of pottery to wings.
Her only levity is patience,
The sport of truly chastened things.

Reviewers have criticised her astringent verse for being too in love with language than with the precision of critical thought, and this book bears many of such flaws. But poems like the above just saves the day, at least for me.

[Nara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Paired Things

Who, who had only seen wings,
could extrapolate the
skinny sticks of things
birds use for land,
the backward way they bend,
the silly way they stand?
And who, only studying
birdtracks in the sand,
could think those little forks
had decamped on the wind?
So many paired things seem odd.
Who ever would have dreamed
the broad winged raven of despair
would quit the air and go
bandylegged upon the ground,
a common crow?

[Ben Rowe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kay Ryan is a great poet. Her poems manage to be accessible without being shallow or trite. They are short and philosophical without feeling pretentious or gimmicky. They are poems that bring smiles and make you think and rethink what you might otherwise take for granted. Very readable and very rereadable with interesting and precise rhythmic structures.

I will say though that i liked her later collections a good bit more

[Melissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

There was a huge stylistic jump between Ryan's first and second collections. Flamingo Watching is better aligned with the idiosyncrasies in her later work.

[Lori · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of my favorite poets, intelligent and crisp

[Isak · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sharp wisdom, new but formed proverbially, in scattered-rhyme bursts of shining.

[Ambrose Miles · Rating 4 out of 5]

I only read this book because of some crappy reviews of a book I want to read. One of the problems of reading someone else’s review of something “you” haven’t read yourself, is not really knowing by what standard the reviewer goes by in making their judgement. “I didn’t like this book or poet and you won’t either” doesn’t cut it. Does this person really understand poetry? Does this person know the poet and her style? Does this person invest themselves with reading a lot of poetry? Does this person actually like poetry? And then there’s the readers of these reviews who upon reading the review just take the reviewer’s word for it and not read the book for themselves, and thank the critic for the great review.
I’m looking forward to reading more of Kay Ryan’s books.

[Jon Nakapalau · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kay Ryan is a 'stripper' poet; a poet who can force you to look at reality once all layers of accumulated illusions have been ripped away. This (at first) leaves the reader confused...there is the natural reaction to want to start layering again to regain your comfort zone. But it is too late...your eyes have been opened.

[Greta · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kay Ryan spoke at Spokane Falls Community College many years ago and so I am glad to have finally heard one of her books of poetry, at bedtime, read by my sweet husband. Relaxing

[Evan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Maybe my disappointment is due to the fact that, reading the few poems that accompanied the announcements of her poetlaureateship, I got excited, thinking here was a poet who's building on Marianne Moore -- something that seems pretty rare (Robyn Schiff being the exception) -- who's opened so many doors that nobody's walked through.

When I read Ryan's work (this and Niagara River), it had a tendency toward mawkish, too-cute-by-half anthropomorphisms -- the easy kind of hummel (sp?) figurine cuteness Moore avoided until her very late poetry. It also drew morals from nature with a blitheness, also a move Moore was more wary of: so much of her poetry seemed to do so, but, in her wry way, Moore would make the details of the poem invalidate the easy conclusions drawn by the speaker.

Moore wouldn't come to easy conclusions; Ryan seems willing to. Moore took the technoogies of examination (to be fancy) in zoology and poetry and held them up for examination; Ryan employs them unquestioningly. So maybe it is because I'm comparing it to Moore's work, but this book was a big let-down to me.

[Melynda Nuss · Rating 4 out of 5]

The album doesn't quite live up to the collection of singles I'd heard. But what singles! "Turtle" and "Flamingos" are some of the best poems in the language. You can hear the frustration in "Turtle," and see

[Teri · Rating 3 out of 5]

New to poetry. Now- before you start sending me poet recommendations- let me try this out.


Just as I thought- I'm not smart enough for poetry.

[Celeste · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hit or miss.

[Alarie · Rating 4 out of 5]

As Jane Hirshfield says, “Kay Ryan’s poetry is entirely unique.” She is musical and often wry. Somehow she breaks that “show don’t tell” rule over and over again, but still makes us say, “Aha!”

[Katie Fitzgerald · Rating 5 out of 5]

No review.

[Mills College Library]

811.54 R9889w 1994