Kay Ryan (born September 21, 1945) is an American poet and educator. She has published seven volumes of poetry and an anthology of selected and new poems. From 2008 to 2010 she was the sixteenth

United States Poet Laureate The Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress—commonly referred to as the United States Poet Laureate—serves as the official poet of the United States. During their term, the poet laureate seeks to raise the national cons ...

. In 2011 she was named a MacArthur Fellow and she won the

Pulitzer Prize The Pulitzer Prize () is an award for achievements in newspaper, magazine, online journalism, literature, and musical composition within the United States. It was established in 1917 by provisions in the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made ...

Biography

Ryan was born in

San Jose, California San Jose, officially San José (; ; ), is a major city in the U.S. state of California that is the cultural, financial, and political center of Silicon Valley and largest city in Northern California by both population and area. With a 2020 popu ...

, and was raised in several areas of the

San Joaquin Valley The San Joaquin Valley ( ; es, Valle de San Joaquín) is the area of the Central Valley of the U.S. state of California that lies south of the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta and is drained by the San Joaquin River. It comprises seven ...

and the

Mojave Desert The Mojave Desert ( ; mov, Hayikwiir Mat'aar; es, Desierto de Mojave) is a desert in the rain shadow of the Sierra Nevada mountains in the Southwestern United States. It is named for the indigenous Mojave people. It is located primarily ...

. After attending Antelope Valley College, she received bachelor's and master's degrees in English from

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the Californ ...

. Since 1971, she has lived in

Marin County, California Marin County is a county located in the northwestern part of the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 262,231. Its county seat and largest city is San Rafael. Marin County is acros ...

, and has taught English part-time at the

College of Marin The College of Marin is a public community college in Marin County, California, with two campuses, one in Kentfield, and the second in Novato. It is the only institution operated by the Marin Community College District. College of Marin has bee ...

in Kentfield. Carol Adair, who was also an instructor at the College of Marin, was Ryan's partner from 1978 until Adair's death in 2009. Her first collection, ''Dragon Acts to Dragon Ends'', was privately published in 1983 with the help of friends. While she found a commercial publisher for her second collection, ''Strangely Marked Metal'' (1985), her work went nearly unrecognized until the mid-1990s, when some of her poems were anthologized and the first reviews in national journals were published. She became widely recognized following her receipt of the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize in 2004, and published her sixth collection of poetry, ''The Niagara River'', in 2005. In July 2008, the U.S.

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The libra ...

announced that Ryan would be the sixteenth

for a one-year term commencing in Autumn 2008. She succeeded

Charles Simic Dušan Simić ( sr-cyr, Душан Симић, ; born May 9, 1938), known as Charles Simic, is a Serbian American poet and former co-poetry editor of the ''Paris Review''. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1990 for ''The World Doesn' ...

. In April 2009, the Library announced that Ryan would serve a second one-year term extending through May 2010. She was succeeded by

W.S. Merwin William Stanley Merwin (September 30, 1927 – March 15, 2019) was an American poet who wrote more than fifty books of poetry and prose, and produced many works in translation. During the 1960s anti-war movement, Merwin's unique craft was the ...

in June 2010. She is a lesbian, and was the first openly lesbian United States Poet Laureate.

Poetry

The Poetry Foundation's website characterizes Ryan's poems as follows: "Like

Emily Dickinson Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886) was an American poet. Little-known during her life, she has since been regarded as one of the most important figures in American poetry. Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massac ...

and

Marianne Moore Marianne Craig Moore (November 15, 1887 – February 5, 1972) was an American modernist poet, critic, translator, and editor. Her poetry is noted for formal innovation, precise diction, irony, and wit. Early life Moore was born in Kirkwood ...

before her, Ryan delights in quirks of logic and language and teases poetry out of the most unlikely places. She regards the 'rehabilitation of clichés,' for instance, as part of the poet’s mission. Characterized by subtle, surprising rhymes and nimble rhythms, her compact poems are charged with sly wit and off-beat wisdom."

J. D. McClatchy J. D. "Sandy" McClatchy (August 12, 1945 – April 10, 2018) was an American poet, opera librettist and literary critic. He was editor of the ''Yale Review'' and president of The American Academy of Arts and Letters. Life McClatchy was born J ...

included Ryan in his 2003 anthology of contemporary American poetry. McClatchy included the following poems in this anthology: "Paired Things", "Mirage Oases", "A Cat/A Future", "The Old Cosmologists", "That Will to Divest", and "Drops in the Bucket". He wrote in his introduction, "Her poems are compact, exhilarating, strange affairs, like Satie miniatures or Cornell boxes. … There are poets who start with lived life, still damp with sorrow or uncertainty, and lead it towards ideas about life. And there are poets who begin with ideas and draw life in towards their speculations. Marianne Moore and May Swenson were this latter sort of artist; so is Kay Ryan." Ryan's poems are often quite short. In one of the first essays on Ryan,

Dana Gioia Michael Dana Gioia (; born December 24, 1950) is an American poet, literary critic, literary translator, and essayist. Since the early 1980s, Gioia has been considered part of the literary movements within American poetry known as New Forma ...

wrote about this aspect of her poetry. "Ryan reminds us of the suggestive power of poetry–how it elicits and rewards the reader’s intellect, imagination, and emotions. I like to think that Ryan’s magnificently compressed poetry – along with the emergence of other new masters of the short poem like Timothy Murphy and H.L. Hix and the veteran ''maestri'' like Ted Kooser and Dick Davis – signals a return to concision and intensity." Ryan tends to avoid using the personal "I" in her poetry, claiming that she "didn’t want confession. hedidn’t want to be Anne Sexton." Though distanced, her work is often deeply introspective, analyzing both the nature of the mind and the ability of language to mold reality. Many reviewers have noted an affinity between Ryan's poetry and

's. In addition to the oft-remarked affinity with Moore, affinities with poets May Swenson, Stevie Smith,

Wendy Cope Wendy Cope (born 21 July 1945) is a contemporary English poet. She read history at St Hilda's College, Oxford. She now lives in Ely, Cambridgeshire, with her husband, the poet Lachlan Mackinnon. Biography Cope was born in Erith in Kent (no ...

, and

Amy Clampitt Amy Clampitt (June 15, 1920 – September 10, 1994) was an American poet and author. Life Clampitt was born on June 15, 1920, of Quaker parents, and brought up in New Providence, Iowa. In the American Academy of Arts and Letters and at nearby G ...

have been noted by some critics. Thus

Katha Pollitt Katha Pollitt (born October 14, 1949) is an American poet, essayist and critic. She is the author of four essay collections and two books of poetry. Her writing focuses on political and social issues from a left-leaning perspective, including abo ...

wrote that Ryan's fourth collection, ''Elephant Rocks'' (1997), is "Stevie Smith rewritten by William Blake" but that ''Say Uncle'' (2000) "is like a poetical offspring of George Herbert and the British comic poet Wendy Cope." Another reviewer of ''Say Uncle'' (2000) wrote of Ryan, "Her casual manner and nods to the wisdom tradition might endear her to fans of A. R. Ammons or link her distantly to Emily Dickinson. But her tight structures, odd rhymes and ethical judgments place her more firmly in the tradition of Marianne Moore and, latterly, Amy Clampitt." Ryan's wit, quirkiness, and slyness are often noted by reviewers of her poetry, but Jack Foley emphasizes her essential seriousness. In his review of ''Say Uncle'' he writes, "There is, in short, far more darkness than 'light' in this brilliant, limited volume. Kay Ryan is a serious poet writing serious poems, and she resides on a serious planet (a word she rhymes with 'had it'). Ryan can certainly be funny, but it is rarely without a sting." Some of these disjoint qualities in her work are illustrated by her poem "Outsider Art", which

Harold Bloom Harold Bloom (July 11, 1930 – October 14, 2019) was an American literary critic and the Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. In 2017, Bloom was described as "probably the most famous literary critic in the English-speaking worl ...

selected for the anthology '' The Best of the Best American Poetry 1988–1997''. Ryan is also known for her extensive use of internal rhyme. She refers to her specific methods of using internal rhyme as "recombinant rhyme." She claims that she had a hard time "tak ngend-rhyme seriously," and uses recombinant rhyme to bring structure and form to her work. As for other types of form, Ryan claims that she cannot use them, stating that it is "like wearing the wrong clothes."

Honors and awards

Ryan's awards include a 1995 award from the

Ingram Merrill Foundation The Ingram Merrill Foundation was a private foundation established in the mid-1950s by poet James Merrill (1926-1995), using funds from his substantial family inheritance.J. D. McClatchyBraving the Elements ''The New Yorker'', 27 March 1995. Retrie ...

, the 2000 Union League Poetry Prize, the 2001

Maurice English Poetry Award Maurice may refer to: People *Saint Maurice (died 287), Roman legionary and Christian martyr *Maurice (emperor) or Flavius Mauricius Tiberius Augustus (539–602), Byzantine emperor * Maurice (bishop of London) (died 1107), Lord Chancellor and L ...

for her collection ''Say Uncle'', a fellowship in 2001 from the

National Endowment for the Arts The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal ...

, a 2004

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the art ...

, and the 2004 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. Her poems have been included in three

Pushcart Prize The Pushcart Prize is an American literary prize published by Pushcart Press that honors the best "poetry, short fiction, essays or literary whatnot" published in the small presses over the previous year. Magazine and small book press editors are ...

anthologies, and have been selected four times for ''

The Best American Poetry ''The Best American Poetry'' series consists of annual poetry anthologies, each containing seventy-five poems. Background The series, begun by poet and editor David Lehman in 1988, has a different guest editor every year. Lehman, still the general ...

''; "Outsider Art" was selected by

for '' The Best of the Best American Poetry 1988–1997''. Since 2006, Ryan has served as one of fourteen Chancellors of The Academy of American Poets. On January 22, 2011, Ryan was listed as a finalist for a 2011

National Book Critics Circle Award The National Book Critics Circle Awards are a set of annual American literary awards by the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) to promote "the finest books and reviews published in English".Pulitzer Prize for Poetry The Pulitzer Prize for Poetry is one of the seven American Pulitzer Prizes awarded annually for Letters, Drama, and Music. It was first presented in 1922, and is given for a distinguished volume of original verse by an American author, published ...

, calling her collection ''The Best of It: New and Selected Poems'' (Grove Press) "a body of work spanning 45 years, witty, rebellious and yet tender, a treasure trove of an iconoclastic and joyful mind.""The 2011 Pulitzer Prize Winners: Poetry"
The Pulitzer Prizes. Retrieved November 12, 2013. With biographical blurb and publisher description of the collection. On September 20, 2011, Ryan was awarded a

John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is a private foundation that makes grants and impact investments to support non-profit organizations in approximately 50 countries around the world. It has an endowment of $7.0 billion and ...

Fellowship A fellow is a concept whose exact meaning depends on context. In learned or professional societies, it refers to a privileged member who is specially elected in recognition of their work and achievements. Within the context of higher educatio ...

, or "genius grant". In 2013, she received a 2012

National Humanities Medal The National Humanities Medal is an American award that annually recognizes several individuals, groups, or institutions for work that has "deepened the nation's understanding of the humanities, broadened our citizens' engagement with the huma ...

from President

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, Obama was the first Af ...

.President Obama to Award 2012 National Medal of Arts and National Humanities Medal
Whitehouse.gov, retrieved June 30, 2013

Poetry collections

* 1983: ''Dragon Acts to Dragon Ends'', 64 pages, Fairfax, California: Taylor Street Press, * 1985: ''Strangely Marked Metal'', 50 pages, Providence, Rhode Island: Copper Beech Press, * 1994: ''Flamingo Watching'', 63 pages, Providence, Rhode Island: Copper Beech Press, * 1996: ''Elephant Rocks'', 84 pages, New York:

Grove Press Grove Press is an American publishing imprint that was founded in 1947. Imprints include: Black Cat, Evergreen, Venus Library, and Zebra. Barney Rosset purchased the company in 1951 and turned it into an alternative book press in the United Sta ...

, * 2000: ''Say Uncle'', New York: Grove Press, 80 pages, * 2005: ''The Niagara River'', 72 pages, New York: Grove Press, * 2008: ''Jam Jar Lifeboat & Other Novelties Exposed'', illustrated by Carl Dern. 40 pages, Red Berry Editions, * 2010: ''The Best of It: New and Selected Poems'', 270 pages, Grove Press, * 2015: ''Erratic Facts'', 128 pages, New York: Grove Press,

References

External links

*
Profile and poems of Kay Ryan
at the Poetry Foundation. *
Audio: Kay Ryan reading at the 2010 Key West Literary Seminar (29:52)

* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20080509074405/http://www.danagioia.net/essays/eryan.htm Essayby