The Poetry of Kay Ryan
Comments by J. Zimmerman

Highlights of Poetry. Index of poetry. How to Write Poetry. Books read.

How to write specific forms: Haibun. Haiku. Hay(na)ku. Rengay. Tanka. Concrete. Ghazal. Lai. Pantoum. Prose poem. Rondeau. Rubáiyát. Sestina. Skaldic verse. Sonnet. Terza rima. Triolet. Tritina. Villanelle.

Poets: A.E. Housman. Adam Zagajewski. Agha Shahid Ali. Billy Collins. Billy Collins exercise. Snorri's Edda. Carl Dennis. Clark Strand (haiku and essays). Corey Marks. Franz Wright. Gary Young. The Gawain Poet. J. Zimmerman. J. Zimmerman (haiku). J. Zimmerman (tanka). J.D. McClatchy. Jack Gilbert. Jane Hirshfield. Jorie Graham. Karen Braucher. Kay Ryan. Kay Ryan's style. Kay Ryan The Best Of It: New and Selected Poems. Laureate Poets: Britain; USA. Len Anderson. Li-Young Lee. Linda Pastan. Margaret Atwood. Mary Oliver. May Sarton. Nordic Skalds. Philip Larkin. Pulitzer Poetry Prize (U.S.A). Richard Hugo. Robert Bly. Sara Teasdale. Snorri's Edda. Stephen Dunn. Ted Kooser. W.S. Merwin.

Books by Kay Ryan:
The Best of It: New and Selected Poems (2010).
The Jam Jar Lifeboat and Other Novelties Exposed (2008).
The Niagara River (2005).
Say Uncle (2000).
Elephant Rocks (1996).
Flamingo Watching (1994).
Strangely Marked Metal (1985).
Dragon Acts to Dragon Ends (1983).

Kay Ryan featured in The Best American Poetry:
The Best American Poetry: 2006 (guest editor Billy Collins);
and The Best American Poetry: 2005 (guest editor Paul Muldoon) with "Home to Roost";
and The Best American Poetry: 1999 (guest editor Robert Bly) with "The Will to Divest";
and The Best American Poetry: 1995 (guest editor Richard Howard) with "Outsider Art".

Time Line.

The Best Of It: New and Selected Poems (2010) Kay Ryan's Stanford reading (2010) from The Best Of It: New and Selected Poems.

• 8th book of poems.
• Statistics:

  Section	Number of poems	Number read at 2010 Stanford reading	Percent of poems published previously in specified book
  New poems	23	11	0
  After Zeno	1	0	0
  Flamingo Watching (1994)	45	10	94% (of 48)
  Elephant Rocks (1996)	58	6	92% (of 63)
  Say Uncle (2000)	52	5	81% (of 64)
  The Niagara River (2005)	51	1	79% (of 64)

• 230 poems.
• 5 section.
• 263 pages of poems.

The Jam Jar Lifeboat and Other Novelties Exposed (2008) With illustrations by Carl Dern. Edited by Marie Dern and Jane Downs.

• 7th book of poems.
• Statistics:
  • 15 poems, each a "response to a randomly selected entry in Ripley's Believe It or Not!.
  • 40 pages.

The Niagara River (2005) One of her two best books as of its publication.

• 6th book of poems.
• Winner: Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize.
• Runner-up: Best Book of Contemporary Poetry Prize for CPR (Contemporary Poetry Review).
• Statistics:
  • 64 poems.
  • 1 section.
  • 72 pages of poems.
  • For the first 17 poems (which were never more than 1-page poems):

    	Lines per poem	Sentences per poem	Words per line
    Range	13 to 23	2 to 6	1 to 6
    Mean	18	4	3

    Comparing the above table with the values for the earlier Flamingo Watching and Strangely Marked Metal, we see that the later (The Niagara River) 1-page poems:

    1. Have a similar number of lines to the earlier poems, with less variety in the number of lines.
    2. Have a similar number of sentences per poem, with significantly less variety in the number of sentences.
    3. Have significantly fewer words per line.
• Acknowledges first publications in:
  • The American Scholar
  • The Atlantic
  • Boston Review
  • Ms.
  • The New Criterion
  • The New Yorker
  • Parnassus
  • Poetry
  • Speakeasy
  • The Threepenny Review
  • Water/Stone
  • Yale Review
  • Zyzzyva
• "Home to Roost":
  • Reprinted in The Best American Poetry 2005.
• "Chinese Foot Chart":
  • Reprinted in The Pushcart Prize XXIX (2005).

Say Uncle (2000) Her best book as of its publication.

• 5th book of poems.
• Statistics:
  • 64 poems.
  • 1 section.
  • 76 pages of poems.
• Amazon statistics says:
  • the most common words are 'day' and 'even' (9 (or 0.3%) each of 3,576 words);
  • the next most common are 'part' and 'people' and 'think' (8 (or 0.2%) each of 3,576 words); and
  • these are the "100 most frequently used words in this book":
    

    again against always among anything attention baby behind big birds boats cannot catch coming day deferred does donkey doubt down drops earth eat even ever far feeling fishes get go green grows happen hard hope horses imagine inside kashmir know left less life light little look love matter mind native nor nothing old once part pennies people places plate pocket resist right rust sailors say see sense set shift should silence small something sometimes spring star states stick sun surface tailor takes test things think though thoughts time toward turns two upon vanish verbs want warps water weakness whole work.

• Acknowledges first publications in:
  • The Atlantic Monthly
  • Columbia
  • The Georgia Review
  • The Journal
  • The New Yorker
  • The Paris Review
  • Parnassus
  • Partisan Review
  • Ploughshares
  • Poetry
  • The Recorder
  • Salon
  • Solo
  • The Southern Review
  • The Threepenny Review
  • Water/Stone
  • The Yale Review
  • Zyzzyva
• "The Will to Divest":
  • Reprinted in The Best American Poetry 1999.

Elephant Rocks (1996) This is the transitional book from tremendously good work to great work. See further comments at Kay Ryan's style.

• 4th book of poems.
• Statistics:
  • 63 poems.
  • 1 section.
  • 84 pages of poems.
• Amazon statistics says:
  • the most common word is 'something' (22 or 0.5% of 4,263 words);
  • the second most common is 'people' (16 or 0.4% of 4,263 words);
  • the third most common is 'things' (14 or 0.3% of 4,263 words); and
  • these are the "100 most frequently used words in this book":
    

    add almost always backward best coming cost creatures cup distance double down eat elephant even ever feel fish future general go goes grow happened hard head heat holes home intransigence island itself keep know last leave leg life line little lives losses lost love makes margins minute moon morning must need needle nothing now ordinary others own part people perhaps personal pieces places pleasure possible really second seems sense shall should silence simply something sometimes spring starts surfaces tailors take things think though thought throat time turn upon uses vessel wait want water weight whatever whole without words work wrong

• Acknowledges first publications in:
  • Alaska Quarterly Review
  • The Georgia Review
  • The New Yorker
  • The Paris Review
  • Partisan Review
  • South Coast Poetry Journal
  • The Southern Review
• "Outsider Art":
  • Reprinted in The Best American Poetry 1995.

Flamingo Watching (1994)

• 3rd book of poems.
• Published by Copper Beech Press.
• Finalist for the Lamont Book Award.
• Finalist for the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize.
• Statistics:
  • 48 poems.
  • 3 sections.
  • 52 pages of poems (with 7 pages of overhead for sections). So, averages 17 pages per section, making each about chapbook size.
  • For 17 poems in section 1 (omitting the 2-page poems):

    	Lines per poem	Sentences per poem	Words per line
    Range	10 to 25	1 to 8	2 to 8
    Mean	17	4 to 5	5

    Comparing the above table with the values for the previous book, Strangely Marked Metal, we see that for the sample of 1-page poems, poems in the newer book have:

    1. Slightly fewer lines, with less variety in the number of lines.
    2. Slightly fewer sentences per poem, with less variety in the number of sentences.
    3. Have slightly fewer words per line.
• Acknowledges first publications in:
  • American Poetry Review
  • The American Scholar
  • Antioch Review
  • The Atlantic
  • Epoch
  • The Formalist
  • G.W. Review
  • Kenyon Review
  • MSS
  • The New Republic
  • The Paris Review
  • Partisan Review
  • TriQuarterly
  • Yale Review
  • Zyzzyva
• From our S.E.B.I.D. [Someone Else Blew It Department]:
  Library Journal reviewed Flamingo Watching as "not recommended" because they felt that "Ryan's cramped syllabics have a monotonous density that too often mistakes sound for sense...these poems are derivative and lacking in substance."

Strangely Marked Metal (1985)

• 2nd book of poems.
• Published by Copper Beech Press.
• The first publicly available book by Ryan. Shows attributes that will continue to shine for decades in her work.

• I echo May Sarton's comments (on the book's back cover):

  Kay Ryan makes it all fresh again with her highly original vision, her elegant, quirky craft. I would like to hear the poems read aloud, as she has a wonderful ear - delightful and dancy. These poems look easy, but the deeper one delves, the more they astonish and nourish.

• The cover is a black and white photo of David Smith's Twenty-four Greek Ys (1950), a painted forged-steel sculpture in the NYC Museum of Modern Art. Its title phrase appears (apparently independently) within "The Tablets" (p.27).

  The sculpture echoes Ryan's poems in a lot of ways:

  • The short spine of the sculpture echoes the short spine of most of Ryan's poems.
  • Each irregular group of Greek Ys is somewhat like one of Ryan's varied-length lines.
  • Each Greek Y raises its arms or its leg in a quirky dance the way Ryan's words don't simply sit on the page but move and interact.
  • Some of the words point left and some point right; some are erect and some are inverted; some are straight-legged and some have a small kink to a knee like a can-can dancer.

• Statistics:
  • 37 poems.
  • 1 section.
  • 40 pages of poems.
  • For the first 17 poems 1-page poems:

    	Lines per poem	Sentences per poem	Words per line
    Range	11 to 30	2 to 10	2 to 10
    Mean	18	5	5

• Acknowledges first publications in:
  • International Poetry Review
  • Mendocino Review
  • Ohio Journal
  • Pacific Review
  • PN Review
  • Poetry

Dragon Acts to Dragon Ends (1983)

• 1st book of poems.
• Privately printed (paid by friends) in California.

Time Line

1945.

Born.

1983.

Published Dragon Acts to Dragon Ends.

1985.

Published Strangely Marked Metal.

1994.

Published Flamingo Watching.

1996.

Published Elephant Rocks.

2000.

Published Say Uncle.

2001.

Awarded a 2001 fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.

2004.

The Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize (worth $100,000).

Awarded a 2004 Guggenheim Fellowship.

2005.

Published The Niagara River.

2006.

Elected a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.

2008.

Appointed U.S.A. poet laureate.

One of 48 women poets in 100 essential modern poems by women:

100 Essential Modern Poems By Women (2008) edited by Joseph Parisi and Kathleen Welton.

Published The Jam Jar Lifeboat and Other Novelties Exposed.

2009.

Appointed for a second term as U.S.A. poet laureate.

2010.

Published The Best of It: New and Selected Poems.

Links and Books.

• Laureate: the Poets Laureate of Britain
• Laureate: the Poets Laureate of the U.S.A.
• Best Poems by the Best Poets - Some Lists of Winners.
• Other Books of Poetry Form.

Related pages: Books of Poetry Form. Alphabetic list of poetry forms and related topics. How to Write Poetry.

Copyright © 2006-2016 by J. Zimmerman, except for the quoted poems. All poems Copyright © 1985-2015 by Kay Ryan. All rights reserved.

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