Kay Ryan reads "Miners' Canaries" at CPL

Here's a second clip of U.S. Poet Laureate Kay Ryan reading in Cleveland this year. To see the first, "Is It Modest?," click here.



Kay Ryan's reading occurred during the Cleveland Public Library's Writers & Readers Series at the Louis Stokes Wing auditorium on Sunday 18 April 2010 in Cleveland, Ohio — amateur video by John Burroughs, a.k.a. Jesus Crisis, posted for educational purposes only. "Miners' Canaries" comes from Kay Ryan's 2010 book The Best of It: New and Selected Poems (published by Grove Press).

For a schedule of upcoming Writers & Readers events hosted by the Cleveland Public Library, please visit http://writersandreaders.cpl.org.

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Kay Ryan reads "Is It Modest?" in Cleveland

U.S. Poet Laureate Kay Ryan reads her poem "Is It Modest?" during the Cleveland Public Library's Writers & Readers Series at the Louis Stokes Wing auditorium on Sunday 18 April 2010 in Cleveland, Ohio. This amateur video by John Burroughs, a.k.a. Jesus Crisis, is posted for educational purposes only. "Is It Modest?" comes from Kay Ryan's 2010 book The Best of It: New and Selected Poems (published by Grove Press).

For a schedule of upcoming Writers & Readers events hosted by the Cleveland Public Library, please visit http://writersandreaders.cpl.org.

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To Be Read or Not to Be Read?

Did anyone ever
tell you that it didn't matter if people heard or read your poetry - that the joy should be in creating it? I have had this conversation repeatedly with someone - let's just say - someone close to me. I also sing and paint pictures, and I have heard the same argument - the joy is in doing it, not who may or may not hear or see it.

Poetry is to be read! Art is to be seen! Music is to be heard! I cry over and over.

Today I glanced at the current Newsweek in the grocery store line. There is an article about our national poet laureate, Kay Ryan. I love what she says about this:

"One of the elements of an art is the fact that it communicates," Ryan says, "The transaction isn't complete if you don't publish." (Of course, that easy for HER to say, but we all try, don't we?)

I also appreciated this unrelated quote:

"Poetry is resistant. In a culture in which the "take-away" is paramount, poetry gives nothing away. You have to look past whatever the poem seems to be about to see what it is."

Oh, Kay

What are we to make of Kay Ryan, recently named as the new U.S. Poet Laureate? Is there any honor in being named to the post at all? After Billy Collins, I thought not. When Charles Simic was so honored, i thought, "well, maybe so." I read a selection of Kay Ryan's work, and came away pleasantly surprised by poems that clunk you over the head, with tight language, but retain a sense of cool vagueness. It's like, "something is happening here, but you don't know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?" to drop a Dylanism. And all her poems seem to end abruptly, with a jarring crunch, like a fighter jet landing on an aircraft carrier. I have to admit it -- I like her. Check out the following poem. The "nightmare water that won't break" gets me every time.

Soft
by Kay Ryan

In harmony with the rule of irony—
which requires that we harbor the enemy
on this side of the barricade—the shell
of the unborn eagle or pelican, which is made
to give protection till the great beaks can harden,
is the first thing to take up poison.
The mineral case is soft and gibbous
as the moon in a lake—an elastic,
rubbery, nightmare water that won't break.
Elsewhere, also, I see the mockeries of struggle,
a softness over people.

--from Flamingo Watching. Copyright © 1994 Copper Beech Press.