Synthesizing Gravity: Selected Prose

by Kay Ryan

The first-ever collection of essays by one of our most distinguished and distinctive poets, Pulitzer Prize-winner and former Poet Laureate of the United States, Kay Ryan



Synthesizing Gravity gathers for the first time a thirty-year selection of Kay Ryan's probings into aesthetics, poetics, and the mind in pursuit of art.



A bracing collection of critical prose, book reviews, and her private previously unpublished soundings of poems and poets-- including Robert Frost, Stevie Smith, Marianne Moore, William Bronk, and Emily Dickinson-- Synthesizing Gravity bristles with Ryan's crisp wit, her keen off-kilter insights, and her appetite and appreciation for the genuine. Among essays like "Radiantly Indefensible," "Notes on the Danger of Notebooks," and "The Abrasion of Loneliness," are piquant pieces on the virtues of emptiness, forgetfulness, and other under-loved concepts. Edited and with an introduction by Christian Wiman, this generous collection of Ryan's distinctive thinking gives us a surprising look into the mind of an American master.

Genres: Poetry, Essays, Nonfiction, Literary Criticism, Criticism, Literary Fiction, Anthologies

208 pages, Hardcover

First published April 14, 2020

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

[Jim Coughenour · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first heard Kay Ryan read her work around 2005 and have been a fan since. Synthesizing Gravity is exactly the kind of prose I’d expect from this poet: smart, sharp, short and often funny. Or maybe my bleak sense of humor is very close to hers.

My favorite sections are her brief notes on specific poems and poets. For example, on William Bronk, a poet maybe not widely known:

For Bronk, the remoteness is extreme. He’s so hungry to get some faraway focus and he just can’t. All of his poems are these barren tripod marks, where he set up his glass once again, where he tried again. I don’t know why the evidence of failure should provide consolation but it always does.

“Barren tripod marks.” It takes a poet to invent that image.

On Dickinson:

Blundering doesn’t work, except it does. It can't lead you there, except it’s the only way to get there. I will go so far as to hazard that blundering might be generative, meaning that rooting around in a haystack long and fruitlessly enough could conceivably breed a needle.

Also: special mention for the essays on a writers’ conference and one on Notebooks. Page by page, Ryan made me laugh, made me think. I felt lucky to have the company in this current period of confinement.

[Keith Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sure, Kay Ryan hung on to get all of the big awards -- Pulitzer, Macarthur, Poet Laureate -- but she was able to get there by following her own path. Her real education in the art was self-directed, and, even though she was a teacher, she was never part of the creative writing establishment. Probably the best known essay in here is her "I Go to AWP," where she is very skeptical of not just that big conference (I wonder if it will ever come back?), but of the whole world that created it. She writes "The most important thing a beginning writer may have going for her is her bone-deep impulse to defend a self that at the time might not look all that worth getting worked up about." Most readers would clearly get the sense that she's talking about herself, that she finds this attitude very important and worth defending from the temptations of AWP, but also and typically, she doesn't sound that abrasive. Ryan is able to criticize what has been the world of academic writing without sounding abrasive.

She also is proud of her very unique group of influencers. British, Stevie Smith. and Philip Larkin (for both their form and their humor while going after the large themes and only obliquely revealing themselves). Frost (for his short poems; she admits to not liking the long narratives); Marianne Moore ("She latches and thrives upon the tension between freedom and restraint"). Hopkins! Is good to Williams, even if she dismisses the whole Variable Foot talk. Really good quick readings of Dickinson. Put the influences together and it is easy to place her short, short-lined poems, unafraid of rhymes (even if haphazard), rising out of that mix.

But so refreshing to read something like this, where the poet is so unconcerned about fashion and deeply concerned about the art. She is willing to make it "a calling!"

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Roughly the first half of this book is a pure joy to read —humor and criticism blend so well—toward the end the shorter pieces began to feel less engaging, but ultimately still really wonderful. Would definitely pick it up if you’re feeling unsure about your own creativity at the moment.

[Punk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kay Ryan is one of my favorite poets and this collection of prose written from 1988-2017 offers an intriguing glimpse at the way she thinks about poetry. The book is in four parts, though what each section has to offer is something editor Christian Wiman does not reveal in their clunky and somewhat smug introduction.

My best guess is:

1. Essays
2. Book Reviews/Criticism
3. Explications
4. Musings (Random)

The essays are light and playful and work to ease you into the book and Ryan's way of thinking. "A Consideration of Poetry" looks at the things nonsense and poetry have in common:

Something nonsensical in the heart of poetry is the very reason why one can't call poetry "useful." Sense is useful; you can apply things that make sense to other circumstances; you can take something away. But nonsense you can only revisit; its satisfactions exist in it, and not in application. This is why Auden and others can say with such confidence that poetry makes nothing happen. That's the relief of it. And the reason why nothing can substitute for it.

"I Go to AWP" reads like the field notes of an embittered anthropologist studying the habits and behaviors of a pack of writers during their annual migration to the AWP conference:

Soon after introductions, the dramatic differences in style and talent among the panelists begin to tear the table apart. In the best panels a happy anarchy ensues resulting in a shambles enjoyed by all.

"Specks" investigates what holds a poem together, what gets you from the first line to the last:

While writing a poem the hot wire of thought welds together strange chunks of this and that.

It can't completely combine the disparate elements and make a new element of them, but it can loosen the edges of mutually disinterested materials enough to bond them so that a serial lumpy going-on is achieved, crude emergency bridges made, say, of brush and old doors, just barely strong enough to get the thought across before the furious townspeople show up.

This essay made me sit down and pour out two barely related thoughts I'd been thinking out into a poem, the first one I've written in a while, because poetry can be that, two thoughts, held together only by string and the fact that the writer has put them down, one after another, on the same page. Except you can never be sure if what you're doing is working, that is in the hands of the reader:

Because what I am transporting in my hands is both weightless and invisible, and because it must be held loosely, it is impossible to know at the time if I have carried it or if what I have done is a comical act, a person pretending to carry something carefully; a farcelike delicacy of manners.

Here we're back to the idea of poetry as a form of nonsense. As she says in "Do You Like It?": "Though a person may be absolutely destined to be a poet, the person doesn't altogether understand this at first. For a long time the person just feels silly."

The second section gets into it, not necessarily reviewing the books covering these poets, but diving deep into their catalogue of work and expecting the reader to have a certain amount of familiarity with it. Despite never hearing of her before, I enjoyed the piece on Stevie Smith, but I bounced hard off of the two pieces on Marianne Moore, a poet also unknown to me, whose work is almost terminally inaccessible, "repellent" suggests Ryan, who wants "simultaneously to memorize her and throw her down," though even here I found something to note, as Ryan examines that very quality in Moore's writing, and in others:

There has got to be a fanaticism—it doesn't matter, it can be the fanaticism of fastidiousness—but there has to be some private push the reader just can't follow all the way. There must be a crack in the poet of some sort. It has to be deep, privately potent, and unmendable—and the poet must forever try to mend it.

The third section was filled with thrilling discoveries and was easily my favorite. Here she takes a poem and lovingly walks through it pointing out all the fantastic choices the poet made through the words and line breaks and rhymes, the way they build the meaning, and the feelings it makes her feel. Her scrutiny is wonderful and her insight persuasive, but she isn't bossy about it. She sounds like a cherished friend, sprawled on your couch, book in one hand, maybe a drink in the other, explaining why she loves a poem, how it works, why it's so good. If you have trouble understanding or enjoying poetry, read a few pieces in here. I particularly enjoyed her explication of Gerard Manly Hopkins's "Spring and Fall" and Philip Larkin's "Dublinesque."

The fourth section has the shortest offerings and reads like little thoughts that got jotted down and played with until Ryan was done with them, no longer than two or three pages each. Still interesting to read, a bit aimless like the book started to wander away before you were finished, but still full of wonderful metaphors. In "Reading Before Breakfast," Ryan describes the books she likes to read early in the morning, the only time she can read them, because it's only then she can bear them:

My mother liked to tell how my brother as a little boy would sneak up on his Golden Book Hansel and Gretel, open it to the picture of the witch, and cry with fear. He came back again and again. My books are like that; I have reread them so often that they open to the witch.

All in all, I enjoyed this a lot, and took many, many notes. Ryan's mind is fascinating, her metaphors exquisite, her prose weightless, and her ideas approachable. I didn't always agree with what she was saying, but then she doesn't always appear to agree with herself. She takes an idea, runs it out, and sees where it goes. It's a worthwhile journey.

Contains (in part): references to attempted suicide in "The Authority of Lightness."

[J · Rating 4 out of 5]

The poets I go back to are not at all welcoming. I don't apparently like to be welcomed. My poets are a dryish people. Lonely, and what of it. They do not gather round the campfire. My poets don't cherish even the illusion of ease and camaraderie; they do not laze and invite their souls; their souls are much too aggressive already. What their souls need is a little discipline, thank you.

~from essay Con and Pro


Poets written about here that got me excited:

Stevie Smith!
Emily Dickinson (Brother Emily, your gnome)
Marianne Moore
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Gertrude Stein
Wallace Stevens

and really every other person or thing she touched on.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was very much looking forward to this book for quite some time, and Kay Ryan did not disappoint. She brings the same wit and intelligence to these essays that she brings to her poems. She has an almost droll sardonic way of looking at things, casting a keen eye on everything from academic conferences to William Carlos Williams. If you enjoy her poetry, then these essays are worth your time.

[Isak · Rating 5 out of 5]

There's nobody in the game like Kay Ryan.

[Penn Kemp · Rating 5 out of 5]

#fridayreads Delighting in her prose about poetry. Acerbic and acute, droll and contrary.
“Exact articulation is all there is.
Something exactly right is the door through itself.”…
The job of almost all the words is to suspend the essential words, which cannot exist without some context.
This is ennobling all the way around. It imparts value to all the whistling needed to suspend those two transcendent notes that open the dark.
Nor will you know in advance which will be the two notes and which the packing.”

[Lisa Kentgen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This could be a 5 star review. The only reason it is not is some of the essays are more critiques of new works by other poets and these weren't as strong. I couldn't recommend over half the essays more highly. Loved discovering Ryan's prose.

[Wally Wood · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kay Ryan is a big deal. Seven books of poetry, a Guggenheim Fellowship (2004), the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize (2004), U.S. Poet Laureate twice (2008-2010), the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (2011), a MacArthur Fellowship (2011). For all of that and even given my casual interest in poetry, I'd never heard of her until a month ago. My loss.

Synthesizing Gravity is a collection of Ryan's prose written over thirty years. It includes comments on poems and notes about poets including Philip Larkin, Robert Frost, Stevie Smith (a favorite), Marianne Moore, Wallace Stevens (his letters), Emily Dickinson, William Carlos Williams, and William Bronk all of whom—except Bronk—I had heard. (Note to self: Look up work by William Bronk.) Her observations about other poets and their poems are thought-provoking and apt.

Here she is, for example, on Williams: "The poems feel blown around. Some of my favorites have nearly been blown away. We sense this terrific freshness and immediacy when we read Williams; we hear this arrestingly authentic, direct voice."

And here she is on a Larkin's "We Met at the End of the Party": "the wonderful power of this Larkin poem comes clearly and simply from its being exactly what Larkin would write, from its issuing from a single self. It is his envy of those who can live forward, his chronic sense of missing out, and his enviable technique . . ."

In addition to the substantial material on poetry, Synthesizing Gravity includes essays on attending Ryan's first (and last) Association of Writers and Writing Programs annual conference and—worth the price of admission by itself—"Notes on the Danger of Notebooks."

Writers are often advised to maintain a notebook. If you overhear a snatch of interesting conversation, write it down. If a random idea strikes you, write it down. If you have an unusual experience, write it down. Do it because, as Ryan begins her essay, "Almost everything is supposed to get away from us." But while it may be easy press a few blossoms in your notebook to keep for future reference, it's hobbling. "For the truth is that memories are indistinguishable from matter in that they can neither be created (despite the claims of vacation brochures) nor destroyed."

When you create a poem or a story, she argues, the memories necessary will be there. But taking notes, "the actual physical act of taking them, along with the resulting document in our own words, lends them a spurious importance. It becomes important to us to determine what we meant by that note because we wrote it. We are very self-conscious and therefore we must be vigilant about what we let ourselves see of ourselves. We can see too much."

She quotes Milan Kundera, "We can assiduously keep a diary and note every event. Rereading the entries one day, we will see that they cannot evoke a single concrete image." (Try it, you diary-keepers.) "If a poet seeks to make or keep memories," Ryan writes, "how will she ever know which ones contain the true power, which would assert themselves on their own?"

This essay affected me more strongly than Ryan's others because, while I do maintain a journal, I've never kept the kind of writer's notebook recommended to record snatches of thought, bits of dialogue. And—validating Ryan's point—when I write I use whatever's available already in my brain: dialogue, concrete images, connections, whatever. If it's not in my brain, I use Google.

And I'm going to stop feeling guilty because I don't carry a notebook.

[Delia Turner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kay Ryan writes briefly, vividly, and with quixotic power about poetry and poets in this small collection of short essays. Her thinking is original and her opinions are candid and expressed with astonishing metaphors.

She is one of my favorite poets, writing tight, sharp, internally rhymed, often funny poems.

This little book is going on my list of books to be reread periodically.

[Jenn Mattson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This lovely, lovely book is not one I might have found on my own, but when I was watching Billy Collins' daily broadcast on Facebook a couple of months ago, he mentioned it a few times and it piqued my interest. And I'm so glad I decided to go for it: it's a stunning collection of essays that make observations about poetry and life, and I felt so many observations and insights resonate while reading it, that, at first I was going to savor an essay a day, but that didn't work out well. I kept going and laughing and being stopped in my tracks by amazing insights. I finally got out my trusty pencil and went back and started marking the whole thing up, because I didn't want to forget. But as Ryan identifies about herself in one of the last essays, some of us have memories like Swiss cheese and it's hard to separate the cheese from the holes. So, I'll have to go back and reread it again. I had to buy a collection of her poetry, and look forward to reading them (I read all of her first collected essays before reading her poetry, even though she's won a Pulitzer and been U.S. Poet Laureate.) I suspect that a treat is in store for me.

[Kiki · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ryan's essays are a joy to read because of that incisive mind. She gets right to the point brilliantly and without apology.

The essay on Derichment is particularly thought provoking. It makes a case against the trope that artists only prosper when conditions are "right" and they are receiving lots of support. She uses Matisse's life story as an example, and how in the end of his life he was confined to bed so he turned to scissors and paper instead of paint, "finding liberation through limitation."

"It can be a good thing, then, to feel trapped, cut off, at your wit's end, bored silly, left out, tricked, drained. We need to hear that gurgle when the straw probes futilely for more Coke. We need to be deriched."

[Hesper · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my favorite book I've read this year. I need to buy it asap so I can highlight and write my thoughts among its pages -- and believe me, this book is extremely thought provoking.

Synthesizing Gravity is intimate, dramatic, sentimental, and intense. One of the most enigmatic books I've ever read. I must read more of Kat Ryan's works.

[Polly Merritt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic from start to finish...What a nimble mind she has!
Each chapter is a stand-alone; the thinking she does about other poets is so terrific.
The books is also a great compact size. I was sorry to finish this gem.

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Demanding
Clarifying
Paradigm-breaking.
Ryan gets the cobwebs out of my brain.
She's brilliant.

[James Hogan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, this was a book that made me feel quite feeble and slow and ignorant. I like to think that I am educated and cultured. I like to think that I enjoy poetry - reading and writing both. Yet, reading a work like this, discussing various poets and their works and the inner fire that makes their writings burn, and I feel as if all my musings are but thistles on the breeze. I confess that while I long have confessed an affinity for writing poetry, I have for many years rebelled at reading such, stubbornly certain that it will unduly influence my own creative efforts. Well in recent years I have softened this stance and have decided that it is not a bad thing to read the poems of others and attempt to learn and be thrilled by those who have come before. This book lies in this direction. I found it recently as I had a few hours to kill in Chicago's O'Hare airport. As one often does, I found myself in the bookstore just looking for a half-decent book and this one by Kay Ryan caught my eye. I picked it up and turned to various pages and found myself entranced by the way she turned a phrase. Oddly enough, an airport bookstore actually got me to purchase a book. Wonders never cease. Well, it's sat on my shelf for the past few months but I finally picked it up a few days ago for a trip that I was taking and a few nights later and I have finished it. A quick read, does that mean it's light and fluffy and meaningless? Certainly not. But I'm not entirely certain of what I have read. I have not read any of Ryan's poetry before (or was even aware of her existence), yet reading her writings on other poets and their works stirred my heart. Yet yes, I also feel mute before her work, struck dumb and feeble of tongue as I read of how she responds to the great poets of our time (and times past). Firstly, while I know many of the poets she discusses (such as Frost, Dickenson, etc), there are many I know not of (Stevie Smith, Larkin and many many more). This confirmed my long suspected belief that my cultural knowledge is really quite shallow. But more than that, reading her thoughts on various poems shook me. Poems that I could not quite decipher or understand were ones that Ryan found utterly striking and fiery, poems that spoke existence into the soul. I read these same poems and...was not moved. What is wrong with me? Except I think Ryan would acknowledge the validity of my response, as she writes and agrees that her responses to these poems - while very true and real - are also very personal and resonations with her own self. So perhaps it is alright for me to not quite feel as she does. Yet...I still feel a bit dazzled at the way Ryan responds to these poems and I feel as if perhaps I am a bit further down the ladder of creative prowess than I even feared. Alas. It is good to be humbled now and again (I need more of it, I am sure). There was one poem ("Spring and Fall" by Hopkins) that actually did strike me to my core, which gave me brief hope that all is not lost for the fire of my soul. Anyways, I have spent most of these words on this collection of Ryan's essays discussing my own fears and musings, which seem incredibly self-serving, yet at the same times, I suspect Ryan would give a wry smile, suspecting nothing less. For all writings that we engage with, is truly an engagement, a conversation between self and the work that yet lives. Perhaps my mind - many rooms yet only partially inhabited - is not as disjointed and sparkly as some others, yet still it is mine. And so while I am not entirely sure if I agree or understand with all of Ryan's musings, I am grateful for her engaging herself with the works of others and sharing such with ourselves, creating a community of souls, ones that long to know and be known. We oft know not what we write, yet we write nonetheless what we know and suspect, even hidden from our conscious minds. Grateful for the exposure to poems and poets that I knew not before reading this book. Very worthwhile read.

[Karola · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Pulitzer-prize-winning poet Kay Ryan is not nice. She is haughty and critical of the mediocre. Vicious, even. As she visits a book fair, she lashes blistering comments on creative writing and poetry teachers, one would imagine they are buried under the heap of criticism never to resurface. The table with conference panel setup looks like "the Last Supper but just with water glasses."

She's against nonsense and knows how to recognize it: "... nonsense is always shaped. You can distinguish real nonsense from garbage because nonsense is shaped and tense."

Then, you, the reader, reach her essays on the poets she admires. The tables will turn. If you're curious enough to keep reading and look under the table, you see a fragile poet, afraid of losing her self, fighting for every breadth of originality.

"The most important thing a beginning writer may have going for her is her bone-deep impulse to defend a self that at the time might not look all that worth getting worked up about. You'll note a feral protectiveness – a wariness, a mistrust. But the important point is that this mistrust is the outside of the place that has to be kept empty for the slow development of self-trust. You have to defend before it looks like you have anything to defend. But if you don't do it too early, it's too late."

The notes Ryan takes for herself are "promisory notes – when I write them to myself, I can enjoy the feeling that I have something wonderful to express, but I don't have to spell it out yet."

If you think ha when reading something good it might be "the body's natural response to perfection, to a perfect trick being pulled off."

And so on and on, the book is glistening with tiny jewels of original ideas and poetry. You read this and think ha, and for a moment feel lighter, reshuffle your rules of gravity.

[Theresa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bracing!!
A valuable exercise for me, and it was a strenuous exercise.
As the blurb says, this is a collection of Kay Ryan's prose pieces.

Christian Wiman is editor and introducer. He divides Ryan's prose pieces into four parts:

I. Poetry... "It's the strangest thing; a poem is a trap--that is a release. It's a small door to a room full of gold that we can have anytime we go through the door, but that we can't take away."

II. Poets... their individuality in light of each one's prose-- notebooks, jottings, letters, lectures, memoir.

III.Poems... selected ones she has known and liked or found jarring.

IV. The Audience...without whom a poem would not survive. And poets want their poems to have a place in the world. They are connectors.
________ ____________________________ _________
I once had a literature teacher who told us that literature opens doors.
This book opened a door for me into poetry. When you have read it once, you are not done. It opens into a room you want to, maybe need to, return to.
This is not about Ryan's poems or anyone's poems except as they reveal what poetry is, according to Ryan. And I would add, according to the editor here--Christian Wiman.
Highly recommended.

[Michelle Kidwell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Synthesizing Gravity
Selected Prose
by Kay Ryan


Grove Atlantic
Grove Press

Grove Atlantic
Nonfiction (Adult)
Pub Date 24 Apr 2020






I am reviewing a copy Of Synthesizing Gravity through Grove Atlantic/ Grove Press and Netgalley:





This book gathers a thirty year selection of Kay Ryan’s probings into aesthetics, poetics, and the mind in pursuit of art.






Synthesizing Gravity is a bracing collection of critical prose, book reviews reviews, and her private previously unpublished soundings of poems and poets— including Robert Frost, Stevie Smith, Marianne Moore, William Bronk, and Emily Dickinson.



This book is full of Ryan’s crisp wit, her keen off-kilter insights, and her appetite and appreciation for the genuine. Among essays like “Radiantly Indefensible, Notes on the Danger of Notebooks,” and “The Abrasion of Loneliness,” are piquant pieces on the virtues of emptiness, forgetfulness and other under-loved concepts.




Synthesizing Gravity is evident and with an introduction by Christian Wiman.



I give Synthesizing Gravity five out of five stars!



Happy Reading!

[Jan Angevine · Rating 5 out of 5]

I almost abandoned this book. Even the Pulitzer Prize poetry that Ryan has produced offered no defense. The subjects, the quirky sentence structure, the odd insights, stumped me. As I continued reading, arriving at the essay "I Go to AWP", I was home. "Simone Weil would have starved herself to death before she would have gone to AWP." The essay is a whiplash of thoughts that both inspire insights and explode the absurdities of conferences. It takes some adjustments of the literary "norm" to wade in, but it is worth the adjustment. And this essay on Annie Dillard, "Flying",

"Clearly, material is no problem for Annie Dillard; she is assaulted by it, cracked open at a tap, catapulted easily into the spheres, plunged through ring on ring of consciousness."

This book, as Ryan would say, is a "superior amusement."

[Zack · Rating 3 out of 5]

Goodreads Giveaway - Ephemeral writing is extremely hit or miss in particular and specific ways. What works for you, may not work for me. Kay Ryan's collection not only discusses this in many different ways, but also exemplifies this. Some of the various selected items thrilled me, while others left me cold, or even annoyed me. That's not to say that the works were bad or poorly written. Kay Ryan is a very deft writer, with a wonderful capacity for inventive and exploratory thinking. If you enjoy the writings of Robert Frost, Philip Larkin, Emily Dickinson and directionless wandering walks, you may enjoy this book (or at least parts of it). This book rewards the act of reading for the action itself.

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

I generally enjoyed this collection of reviews, essays, and collected musings by Kay Ryan, a writer/poet whose work was new to me. I appreciated her wry wit and creative imagination, which fuse together in unexpectedly captivating ways throughout this book. Reading her work, I was inspired to return to a long-abandoned habit of reading and wrestling with poetry more regularly; her descriptions of its power, its craft, and its unexpected effects on readers throughout the ages reminded me of what I once sensed when I read certain poets– especially Robert Frost, Pablo Neruda, and Mary Oliver– more regularly. Not all of the pieces in this volume intrigued or engaged me, but the ones that did were well worth reading all of the others as well in order to find them... just like poetry.

[Mimi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've long admired Kay Ryan's poetry, but here is another amazing glimpse into her brilliant mind, humbling frequently my understanding, had to reread many paragraphs. Also, was introduced to a couple of poets I have never read: William Bronk and Stevie Smith. There is much information on the writing and understanding of poetry:
"The poem is a space capsule in which impossible combinations feel casual. The body of the capsule is of necessity very strong to have broken out of gravity. It is the hard case for the frail experiments inside. Not frail in the wasted sense, but frail in the opposite sense: the brief visibility of the invisible."

[Michelle Rynkewicz · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this collection slowly at first, feeling like I was lost in a world I didn’t fit in, but wanted to fit in. I’d never heard of Kay Ryan, which is a disappointment on my part since I claim to love poetry. And her prose is poetry with sentences that stretch the axioms in my brain. I’m glad I picked this one up, and saw the whole read through. I learned so much more about poetry, the use of context and words, that I don’t think I’ll ever view writing poetry or prose the same way as I did a year ago. I can’t wait to use what I gleaned from this book to become a better poet.

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I haven't finished a book in what feels like forever. This collection, however, serves a lovely reminder of why we read and write. Ryan's eye peering into other poets' work is bracing and generative, leading to some impressively concise little essays. I loved most when she turned that eye towards herself, "Reading Before Breakfast" being one I read most recently and one I enjoyed most. This whole thing is worth taking your time with because it's full of allusions and context for people you likely haven't read much of (I've heard of maybe two or three poets she treats here).

[Hailey Leithauser · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had read some of these essays in magazines, couldn't wait to get my hands of the book, and it did not disappoint -- so much so that I had to force myself to read only one or two short chapters at a time in order to make it last as long as possible. If you love her poetry you will love her prose, and if you don't, yet, love her poems, this might be the introduction you need. I put it up there with Ruefle's Madness Rack and Honey for one of the best collections on poetry in decades.

[Regine · Rating 5 out of 5]

“I am sure that there is a giggly aquifer under poetry, it so often makes me want to laugh.”

And Kay Ryan makes me laugh with joy at the pleasure of seeing her draw bright lines of thought and language across the page. It is an unexpected delight to share a prose so supply honed, so idiosyncratically true.

One early morning, when I was thinking it was just as well my mind was still quiet so I could read some Ryan, the next essay happened to be “Reading before Breakfast.” It offered: “These are books I can only open in the morning because only then can I bear them. I go to these writers because they contain the original ichor. They are the potent Drink Me.” Potent it is. It shines.

[Sindre Homlong · Rating 5 out of 5]

Min favorittlyriker skriver essays om litteratur. Og essayene hennes er på samme høyde som diktene. Setningene er samtidig svært originale og ekstremt presise - det er ikke lett å få til. Denne boka kommer jeg til å lese en tredje gang også.

[Seth · Rating 4 out of 5]

The personal essays (such as "I Go to AWP" and "The Poet Takes a Walk") were my favorites in this collection, and I also enjoyed the ones that discuss the lives of other poets. I didn't connect with the ones that were more or less just analyses of poems, though they were clearly lovingly written.