Word: ryan
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...mainly second-language students and students who lost their way in school," Ryan says. "They wanted something that I could help them get: an understanding of the basic elements of grammar, pronouns, those pesky apostrophes. The goal was to write an effective paragraph that was coherent and well supported. We aspired to the semicolon, but that rarely happened...
...David Lehman, editor of the Best American Poetry series, describes her work as both "riddling and reader-friendly." And critics often note the wry, introspective, paradoxical quality of her poems. Ryan has said that her poems "surf the edge of sensory deprivation." Yet she also seeks to unnerve the reader...
...Ryan will wield her bite remains to be seen. Each poet laureate can establish programs of his or her own choosing. Joseph Brodsky, laureate from 1991 to 1992, worked to make books of poetry available in supermarkets, airports and hotel rooms. Robert Pinsky used his three-year tenure to start the Favorite Poem Project, in which Americans read and comment on their favorite poems. Billy Collins initiated Poetry 180, a poem a day to be read in American high schools...
...Although Ryan hasn't decided what her project will be, she agrees with those who feel that poetry's "uselessness" is precisely what makes it cool. As Matthew Zapruder, a poet and an editor at Wave Press, observes, "The idea that you write poetry your whole life and then suddenly in a very public way have to start thinking about how to make it 'useful' for the nation is pretty terrifying. In a culture like ours, where language has been completely and utterly subordinated to the task of selling people things, how do you create a little freedom? Only...
...Ryan will commute to the Library of Congress - quite a trek from her home in Fairfax, Calif. Until she takes office this fall, she will try to maintain her normal routine, riding her bicycle in the hills and running - the things, she says, "that keep me sane...