Poetry is an orphan of silence

Congratulations are due to Kay Ryan, who has just been named Poet Laureate. (She replaces Charles Simic, whose words form the title to this post.)

Her entry page on Poets.org provides an interesting description of her work by J.D. McClatchy, who described her poems as "compact, exhilarating, strange affairs, like Erik Satie miniatures or Joseph Cornell boxes. She is an anomaly in today's literary culture: as intense and elliptical as Dickinson, as buoyant and rueful as Frost."

Ever the modern gal, I like that her poems are short and deceptively easy to read. Here's a couple selections courtesy of Poets.org, which provides other selections as well, in case you're interested in reading more by her.

NOTHING VENTURED
by Kay Ryan

Nothing exists as a block
and cannot be parceled up.
So if nothing's ventured
it's not just talk;
it's the big wager.
Don't you wonder
how people think
the banks of space
and time don't matter?
How they'll drain
the big tanks down to
slime and salamanders
and want thanks?



PATIENCE
by Kay Ryan

Patience is
wider than one
once envisioned,
with ribbons
of rivers
and distant
ranges and
tasks undertaken
and finished
with modest
relish by
natives in their
native dress.
Who would
have guessed
it possible
that waiting
is sustainable—
a place with
its own harvests.
Or that in
time's fullness
the diamonds
of patience
couldn't be
distinguished
from the genuine
in brilliance
or hardness.