Word: ryans
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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When the Library of Congress announced Kay Ryan as its pick for 16th Poet Laureate Consultant last week, the poetry community went all atwitter. Mention the title "poet laureate" outside the poetry community, and you'll find it has an appeal that's, well, poetic. But even cognoscenti who can rattle off the rhyme scheme of a sonnet in their sleep might be hard pressed to answer the question: What exactly does the poet laureate...
...will Ryan, a self-described "modern hermit," adjust to the post's demands? She expects that 90% of her life will be disrupted. "But I'm ready to be interrupted," she says. "I'm getting tired of myself, tired of inflicting myself on myself. I'm ready to inflict myself on others...
...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...