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New Poet Laureate
Published: 7/18/2008 11:53 AM
Last Modified: 7/18/2008 11:53 AM

I am like, it would seem, a great many people, who responded to the news that Kay Ryan was named the U.S. Poet Laureate with the question, "Who?"

I've been familiar with the work of -- or at least recognized the names -- of most of the people who over the past few years have held this title: Billy Collins, Howard Nemerov, Mark Strand, Robert Penn Warren, Gwendolyn Brooks, Stanley Kunitz, Richard Wilbur.

But Ryan, who was named to the post this week, is a writer of whom I knew nothing.

And apparently it's going to take me some time to catch up, because according to an Associated Press story, Ryan's three books of poetry available on Amazon have sold out. Her publisher is working to get a new book, "New and Selected Poems," into stores as soon as possible.

I think the wait will be worth it, to judge from the poems that been published in conjunction with news stories, to give readers a taste of Ryan's work.

For example:



The other shoe

Oh if it were
only the other
shoe hanging
in space before
joining its mate.
If the undropped
didn't congregate
with the undropped.
But nothing can
stop the mid-air
collusion of the
unpaired above us
acquiring density
and weight. We
feel it accumulate.



And:

Hope

What's the use
of something
as unstable
and diffuse as hope -
the almost-twin
of making-do,
the isotope
of going on:
what isn't in
the envelope
just before
it isn't:
the always tabled
righting of the present.

Her work has echoes of people like Billy Collins (in the gently ironic humor), of William Carlos Williams (in the way the clipped lines seem to be everyday speech subtly rearranged -- something that looks easy and reads easily but is not easy to bring off), of Emily Dickinson (in the sense of compression, of so much being said in so few words).

For more:

Read the story: Library of Congress page on Kay Ryan


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ARTS

James D. Watts Jr. has lived in Oklahoma for most his life, even though he still has people saying to him, "Don't sound like you're from around these parts." A University of Oklahoma Phi Beta Kappa graduate, Watts has received the Governor Arts Award, Harwelden Award and the National Conference of Christians and Jews Beth Macklin Award for his writing. Before coming to the Tulsa World, Watts worked for the Tulsa Tribune.

Contact him at (918) 581-8478.

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