Two from Kay Ryan, new U.S. Poet Laureate.

I've just discovered Ryan's work--not hard to do, given how much out of the poetry loop I am, but apparently she's a low-profile person by nature, a bit like former laureate Ted Kooser in that sense. She teaches developmental English in the Marin area of California and has very quietly published 4-5 books over the last decade and a half.

She writes compressed gems such as these two (from her 2005 volume The Niagara River). Look/listen for her gentle internal rhymes and dig those sly line breaks. The poems are not quite like anything else I've ever read. She's being compared to Dickinson, but Dickinson is a lot wilder and more profane by any stretch. Enjoy...

The Best of It

However carved up
or pared down we get,
we keep on making
the best of it as though
it doesn't matter that
our acre's down to
a square foot. As
though our garden
could be one bean
and we'd rejoice if
it flourishes, as
though one bean
could nourish us.


Ideal Audience

Not scattered legions,
not a dozen from
a single region
for whom accent
matters, not a seven-
member coven,
not five shirttail
cousins; just
one free citizen--
maybe not alive
now even--who
will know with
exquisite gloom
that only we two
ever found this room.