New Poet Laureate: Kay Ryan
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On July 17, Kay Ryan was appointed the 16th Poet Laureate of the United States. About her work, J. D. McClatchy has said: “She is an anomaly in today’s literary culture: as intense and elliptical as Dickinson, as buoyant and rueful as Frost.” A chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, Ryan will be featured in the upcoming Poets Forum in November. Her books are for sale in the Poetry Store, and a video, recordings, poems, and a profile can be found on Poets.org.
Kay Ryan
Kay Ryan was born in California in 1945 and grew up in the small towns of the San Joaquin Valley and the Mojave Desert. She received both a bachelor’s and master’s degree from UCLA.
Ryan has published several collections of poetry, including The Niagara River (Grove Press, 2005); Say Uncle (2000); Elephant Rocks (1996); Flamingo Watching (1994), which 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).
About her work, J. D. McClatchy has said: “Her poems are 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.”
Ryan’s awards include the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, a Guggenheim fellowship, an Ingram Merrill Award, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Union League Poetry Prize, the Maurice English Poetry Award, and three Pushcart Prizes. Her work has been selected four times for The Best American Poetry and was included in The Best of the Best American Poetry 1988-1997.
Ryan’s poems and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Poetry, The Yale Review, Paris Review, The American Scholar, The Threepenny Review, Parnassus, among other journals and anthologies. She was named to the “It List” by Entertainment Weekly and one of her poems has been permanently installed at New Yorkʼs Central Park Zoo. Ryan was elected a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets in 2006. In 2008, Ryan was appointed the Library of Congress’s sixteenth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry. Since 1971, she has lived in Marin County in California.
Poets Laureate of the U.S.A.
A Net-annotated list
from About.com:poetry
A Net-annotated list of all the poets who have served the Library of Congress as Consultant (the old title) or Poet Laureate Consultant (the new title). Biographies & general reference sites are linked to the poetsʼ names — for the recent Laureates these are our own poet profiles with book-buying links at the bottom. Many of the other linked biographies are pages from the Academy of American Poetsʼ Find a Poet archive, a growing & invaluable resource. If there is no general information site about the poet, we have searched the Net for sample poems or other writings or recordings & listed those below the poetʼs name.
* Joseph Auslander 1937-41
His sonnet, “To My Despoiler”
* Allen Tate 1943-44
His essay on writing poetry, “Narcissus As Narcissus”
* Robert Penn Warren 1944-45
* Louise Bogan 1945-46
* Karl Shapiro 1946-47
* Robert Lowell 1947-48
* Leonie Adams 1948-49
* Elizabeth Bishop 1949-50
* Conrad Aiken 1950-52 (First to serve two terms)
* William Carlos Williams
Appointed to serve two terms in 1952 but did not serve — for more on this & other Laureate controversies see the history in Jacket magazine
* Randall Jarrell 1957-58
* Robert Frost 1958-59
“The ʽTrickyʼ Poem,” a Guide to “The Road Not Taken”
* Richard Eberhart 1959-61
“A Studentʼs Memories of Richard Eberhart,” by David Graham
* Louis Untermeyer 1961-63
His poems “Prayer,” “Summons” & “On the Birth of a Child” at Bartleby
“Reveille” and four other poems at Daypoems
* Howard Nemerov 1963-64
* Reed Whittemore 1964-65
* Stephen Spender 1965-66
* James Dickey 1966-68
* William Jay Smith 1968-70
His “Epigrams”
* William Stafford 1970-71
* Josephine Jacobsen 1971-73
Her letter to William Meredith
* Daniel Hoffman 1973-74
* Stanley Kunitz 1974-76
* Robert Hayden 1976-78
* William Meredith 1978-80
* Maxine Kumin 1981-82
* Anthony Hecht 1982-84
* Robert Fitzgerald 1984-85
Appointed and served in a health-limited capacity, but did not come to the Library of Congress
* Reed Whittemore 1984-85
Interim Consultant in Poetry
* Gwendolyn Brooks 1985-86
* Robert Penn Warren 1986-87
First to be designated Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry
* Richard Wilbur 1987-88
* Howard Nemerov 1988-90
* Mark Strand 1990-91
Our 2000 feature article on him, “Stranded: Poet Mark Strand Preaches Political Indifference at UCI,” by Victor Infante
* Joseph Brodsky 1991-92
Our 1997 feature article on him, “The Poet Is Gone, The Poems Live On”
* Mona Van Duyn 1992-93
* Rita Dove 1993-95
A special Web edition of her poem “Lady Freedom Among Us”
* Robert Hass 1995-97
Brighde Mullinsʼ introduction to his reading at DIA Center for the Arts
* Robert Pinsky 1997-2000
His Favorite Poem Project
Our review of his book, The Sounds of Poetry
* Stanley Kunitz 2000-2001
Our collection of Kunitz quotes when he was appointed Laureate
* Billy Collins 2001-2003
His Poetry 180 project to bring poetry into American high schools
Our choice of two of his readings as Poetry MP3 Picks in honor of his laureateship
* Louise Glück 2003-2004
Our links and comments when she was named Laureate
* Ted Kooser 2004-2006
“Voice from the Heartland,” a radio interview and reading soon after he was named Laureate
Excerpt from his book, The Poetry Home Repair Manual, Practical Advice for Beginning Poets
* Donald Hall 2006-2007
Our posting when he was named Laureate
“Poet Laureate Donald Hall Reflects on Age and Nature,” transcript of an October 2006 conversation and reading with Jim Lehrer of PBS NewsHour
“Poetry Across the Atlantic,” Library of Congress Webcast of a historic joint reading with U.S. Poet Laureate Hall and UK Poet Laureate Andrew Motion reading their own and their countrymen(women)ʼs poems
* Charles Simic 2007-2008
