New US Poet Laureate Kay Ryan

July 19, 2008

The American Library of Congress announced on Thursday that the award-winning Californian poet Kay Ryan will become the 16th poet laureate, this approaching autumn. The self-described “modern hermit” who writes Emily Dickinson-style metaphysical poetry will receive a $40,000 salary for her one year stint as the acme of the US poetry world.

Ryan was born in 1945 in California and grew up in the small towns of the San Joaquin Valley and the Mojave Desert. She would go on to receive a bachelor’s and master’s degree from UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles).

She was said to have been ‘delighted and surprised’ when the Library of Congress had contacted her and thought at first she had forgotten to return some overdue books.

Her favourite poets include the modernist poet William Carlos Williams, the English novelist Philip Larkin and John Donne the Jacobean who is catagorised as being part of the 17th century metaphysical poetic movement.

Kay Ryan’s poetry style is of a reflectively short but profound and seriocomical nature which focuses on both the confines of our lives and the illimitable vastness of the universe and existence. She has published a number of works including The Niagara River (Grove Press, 2005); Say Uncle (2000); Elephant Rocks (1996); Flamingo Watching (1994), which incidentally was a finalist for both the Lamont Poetry Selection and the Lenore Marshall Prize; Strangely Marked Metal (1985); and Dragon Acts to Dragon Ends (1983).

Her poems have also been printed in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Poetry, The Yale Review, Paris Review, The American Scholar, The Threepenny Review and Parnassus, to name but a few.

Today she lives with her partner Carol Adair in Fairfax, California.
For an example of her work visit Poetry Magazine.

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With You Always

July 19, 2008




A market stall’s covering gently flutters
In the early Spring breeze,
As the scents of fruit and fresh bread mingle;
The young man gazes towards her
As she lowers excited eyes;
Crowds hurry looking for new things to buy.

How courage reaps rewards that reverberate,
Up to the heavens high;
Her smile stills all sounds that weave encircling;
The beauty of her face and soft voice
Kindle faint embers in his heart;
A bird merrily chirps in nearby trees.

Morning sun reflecting in her rich green eyes
Enrapture seduced passion,
Coursing through their consecrating psyches;
Soon he proposes by the brook
And a week later they marry
In a little church amongst joyful crowds.

Paradisiacal events then unfold
With the arrival of twins
Bringing exaltation to both parents;
Her red flushed cheeks shine like apples
As she watches their children play.
Love sits on thrones of permanence.

A Winter arrives that brings fearsome concern
As she sits by his bedside
Scared, for his life, whilst the doctor is called;
Tears soak the pillows where his head
Rests in her warm and tender embrace,
A sweet kiss breaks free the chains of sickness.

The children play with their toys, by the shined shoes
Of visiting guests and priest,
Her finest china cups are handed out,
Conversations float through hallways
Where life continues resolute;
His gaze rests upon her resplendent brow.

Wrinkles and blemishes emerge as years pass,
Yet her prettiness remains,
Sitting sipping tea they talk through the nights,
Laughing at their shared memories
And drying her moistening eyes,
Then dancing in flickering candle light.

Old age ravages the once soft skin of youth,
As eyes watch passing seasons,
And memories slowly fade away;
He studies the contours of his love,
Sitting quietly sleeping peacefully.
Silently watching her life disappear.

“It is sad”, says the daughter to the doctor.
“My father died years ago”.
She picks up a small silver square,
From the dressing table nearby.
Faint tear stains rest discernable,
Trapped in the frame of an old photograph.

© Edward Beaman-Hodgkiss

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