Post by carolineba112 on May 30, 2013 19:36:37 GMT -5
Growing up in San Joaquin, California, she always described herself as an outsider, but who isn’t an outsider of some sort? Being raised mostly by her mother because her father was a traveling oil driller and being an only child, she felt somewhat out of touch. It was not until the age of 19 when she started writing poetry, but it took her ten years to realize poetry is what she really wanted to do with her life. A sort of epiphany she had, while on a cross country bike ride with her friend, which was supposed to be meant to clear her head, she asked the universe if she should become a writer. The answer was easy; did she enjoy it? Considering poetry encompassed her mind the past 10 years, she realized she liked nothing better than poetry.
Her poems are simple and compact, just like her lifestyle today. In an interview with The Christian Science Monitor, she said, “I’ve tried to live very quietly, so I could be happy.” Ryan has been teaching the same class, remedial English, at the same school for 33 years. She believes the simpler one’s routine; the more complex thinking is available. Much like her poems, something that looks so simple really has a complex under layer streaming through it.
It would be hard to believe now that while Kay Ryan was receiving her B.A. and M.A. in English at UCLA she never took a creative writing class, however Ryan never thought about being a poet until age 19, when her father died. Even harder to believe, she was denied entry in the Poetry Club at UCLA. A woman, who became a US poet laureate from 2008-2010 and awarded the Ruth Lilley Prize in 2004, was denied entry into her college poetry club because she was too much of an outsider.
Ryan’s work may not seem difficult, but it is. She challenges the reader in unusual ways. She is not obscure but sly, dense, and suggestive. She plays with her readers–not maliciously or unnecessarily but to rouse them from conventional response and expectation. Ryan’s poems all seem to say something useful or important, however she crafts it in such a way that the poem takes a lyrical shape. In an interview with UCLA Today, Ryan admitted that she enjoys playing with the audience, “I need to know the audience is out there, the quickest way is to feel it through their laughter.”
Ryan has four published works of poetry, including Dragon Acts to Dragon Ends (1983), which was privately published and surpassed the critic’s eye. Next, Strangely Marked Metal (1985) was published by Copper Beech Press of Rhode Island and included her style of poems, with her concise but witty poems and conventional poems. Almost a decade later, with Flamingo Watching (1994), Ryan finally embraced her sense of peculiarity and published poems only of her style. Her last publication, Elephant Rocks (1996) was very similar to Flamingo Watching with the style of poetry.
Often compared to Emily Dickinson and Marianne Moore, Ryan finds joy in the quirkiness and ambiguity of language and logic. She helps readers realize that poems do not have to be complex to be considered good poetry, as she has shown with her award winning poetry.
Her poems are simple and compact, just like her lifestyle today. In an interview with The Christian Science Monitor, she said, “I’ve tried to live very quietly, so I could be happy.” Ryan has been teaching the same class, remedial English, at the same school for 33 years. She believes the simpler one’s routine; the more complex thinking is available. Much like her poems, something that looks so simple really has a complex under layer streaming through it.
It would be hard to believe now that while Kay Ryan was receiving her B.A. and M.A. in English at UCLA she never took a creative writing class, however Ryan never thought about being a poet until age 19, when her father died. Even harder to believe, she was denied entry in the Poetry Club at UCLA. A woman, who became a US poet laureate from 2008-2010 and awarded the Ruth Lilley Prize in 2004, was denied entry into her college poetry club because she was too much of an outsider.
Ryan’s work may not seem difficult, but it is. She challenges the reader in unusual ways. She is not obscure but sly, dense, and suggestive. She plays with her readers–not maliciously or unnecessarily but to rouse them from conventional response and expectation. Ryan’s poems all seem to say something useful or important, however she crafts it in such a way that the poem takes a lyrical shape. In an interview with UCLA Today, Ryan admitted that she enjoys playing with the audience, “I need to know the audience is out there, the quickest way is to feel it through their laughter.”
Ryan has four published works of poetry, including Dragon Acts to Dragon Ends (1983), which was privately published and surpassed the critic’s eye. Next, Strangely Marked Metal (1985) was published by Copper Beech Press of Rhode Island and included her style of poems, with her concise but witty poems and conventional poems. Almost a decade later, with Flamingo Watching (1994), Ryan finally embraced her sense of peculiarity and published poems only of her style. Her last publication, Elephant Rocks (1996) was very similar to Flamingo Watching with the style of poetry.
Often compared to Emily Dickinson and Marianne Moore, Ryan finds joy in the quirkiness and ambiguity of language and logic. She helps readers realize that poems do not have to be complex to be considered good poetry, as she has shown with her award winning poetry.