|
|
|
|
|
United States Poets Laureate
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
The Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress serves as the
nation's official lightning rod for the poetic impulse of Americans. During his or her
term, the Poet Laureate seeks to raise the national consciousness to a greater
appreciation of the reading and writing of poetry.
The Poet Laureate is appointed annually by the Librarian of Congress and serves
from October to May. In making the appointment, the Librarian consults with former
appointees, the current Laureate and distinguished poetry critics. The position has
existed under two separate titles: from 1937 to 1986 as "Consultant in Poetry to
the Library of Congress" and from 1986 forward as "Poet Laureate Consultant in
Poetry." The name was changed by an act of Congress in 1985.
The Laureate receives a $35,000 annual stipend funded by a gift from Archer M.
Huntington. The Library keeps to a minimum the specific duties in order to afford
incumbents maximum freedom to work on their own projects while at the Library.
The Laureate gives an annual lecture and reading of his or her poetry and usually
introduces poets in the Library's annual poetry series, the oldest in the Washington
area, and among the oldest in the United States. This annual series of public poetry
and fiction readings, lectures, symposia, and occasional dramatic performances
began in the 1940s. Collectively the Laureates have brought more than 2,000 poets
and authors to the Library to read for the Archive of Recorded Poetry and
Literature..(Quoted from the Library of Congress)
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
| |
|
2008 U.S. Poet Laureate: Kay Ryan
|
|
Ryan was born in 1945 in San Jose, Calif., and grew up in the San Joaquin Valley
and the Mojave Desert. Her father was an oil well driller and sometime-
prospector. She received both bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the
University of California, Los Angeles. Since 1971, Ryan has lived in Marin County.
Her partner of 30 years is Carol Adair.
For more than 30 years, Ryan limited her professional responsibilities to the part-
time teaching of remedial English at the College of Marin in Kentfield, Calif., thus
leaving much of her life free for "a lot of mountain bike riding plus the idle
maunderings poets feed upon." She said at one point that she has never taken
a creative writing class, and in a 2004 interview in The Christian Science Monitor,
she noted, "I have tried to live very quietly, so I could be happy."
In her poems Ryan enjoys re-examining the beauty of everyday phrases and
mining the cracks in common human experience. Unlike many poets writing
today, she seldom writes in the first person. She has said, "I don’t use ‘I’
because the personal is too hot and sticky for me to work with. I like the cooling
properties of the impersonal." In her poem "Hide and Seek," for instance, she
describes the feelings of the person hiding without ever saying, "I am hiding":
It’s hard not to jump out instead of waiting to be found. It’s hard to be alone so
long and then hear someone come around. It’s like some form of skin’s
developed in the air that, rather than have torn, you tear.
She describes poetry as an intensely personal experience for both the writer
and the reader: "Poems are transmissions from the depths of whoever wrote
them to the depths of the reader. To a greater extent
than with any other kind of reading, the reader of a poem is making that poem,
is inhabiting those words in the most personal sort of way. That doesn’t mean
that you read a poem and make it whatever you want it to be, but that it’s
operating so deeply in you, that it is the most special kind of reading."
Ryan’s poems are characterized by the deft use of unusual kinds of slant and
internal rhyming–which she has referred to as "recombinant rhyme"–in
combination with strong, exact rhymes and even puns. The poems are peppered
with wit and philosophical questioning and rely on short lines, often no more
than two to three words each. She has said of her ascetic preferences, "An
almost empty suitcase–that’s what I want my poems to be. A few things. The
reader starts taking them out, but they keep multiplying." Because her craft is
both exacting and playfully elastic, it is possible for both readers who like formal
poems and readers who like free verse to find her work rewarding.
John Barr, president of The Poetry Foundation, said: "Halfway into a Ryan poem,
one is ready for either a joke or a profundity; typically it ends in both. Before we
know it the poem arrives at some unexpected, deep insight that likely will alter
forever the way we see that thing."
Ryan has written six books of poetry, plus a limited edition artist’s book, along
with a number of essays. Her books are: "Dragon Acts to Dragon Ends" (1983),
"Strangely Marked Metal" (Copper Beech, 1985), "Flamingo Watching" (Copper
Beech, 1994), "Elephant Rocks" (Grove Press,1996), "Say Uncle" (Grove Press,
2000), "Believe It or Not!" (2002, Jungle Garden Press, edition of 125 copies),
and "The Niagara River" (Grove Press, 2005).
Her awards include the Gold Medal for poetry, 2005, from the San Francisco
Commonwealth Club; the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize from The Poetry Foundation in
2004; a Guggenheim fellowship the same year; a National Endowment for the
Arts fellowship as well as the Maurice English Poetry Award in 2001; the Union
League Poetry Prize in 2000; and an Ingram Merrill Foundation Award in 1995.
She has won four Pushcart Prizes and has been selected four different years for
the annual volumes of the Best American Poetry. Her poems have been widely
reprinted and internationally anthologized. Since 2006, she has been a
Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
