Thanks to Garrison Keillor and The Writer’s Almanac, some of us public radio people get tiny doses of poetry daily. Like Purell, a squirt of poetry keeps the germs of boredom and ennui away. And like any waterless hand sanitizer, poetry can’t be applied just once for the job to be done.
I’ve been proofing, with my husband’s good help, over 6,000 quotations from my upcoming (October 24th) Questions Writers Ask: Wise, Witty and Whimsical Answers from the Pros . I lingered over the poetry chapter with its 248 quotes, wishing I could have included all the wonderful things people say about that art form. But, alas, the book was already a bit long. Here a few of my favorites:
"If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry."
~Emily Dickinson
"A poem is true if it hangs together. Information points to something else. A poem points to nothing but itself."
~E.M. Forster
"Poetry lies its way to the truth."
~John Ciardi
"Poetry is a rich, full-bodied whistle, cracked ice crunching in pails, the night that numbs the leaf, the duel of two nightingales, the sweet pea that has run wild."
~Boris Pasternak
"Poetry is like a plant. It wants to grow toward the sun of spirit and vision."
~Barron Wormser
Our current Poet Laureate, Kay Ryan, a California native, says "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."
Those words come from the 2009 July 13 issue of Newsweek, where Louisa Thomas’ article, “The Reluctant Poet Laureate” masterfully describes Ryan’s use of words: “The effect is delightful and weird like language playing a game of telephone with itself,” she says. Ryan’s images operate on many levels and Ryan herself describes the words in her poems to Newsweek: as “a loose net around a swimming fish, invisible except in the flash of its turn. The fish—the secret life—is at once caught and free.”
"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."
From Purell to fish nets to suitcases. Welcome to my mixed metaphoric bag! But I feel Ryan (and Pasternak) might approve.
I am glad Kay Ryan is “my” poet laureate. I’m glad Kay Ryan taught remedial English at the College of Marin in Kentfield, CA because I, too, think wonderful things happen at the community college level. I spend hours in the library at our nearby Vermont Technical College where 60% of the students this year are women and their women’s studies collection has grown to (almost) rival their science fiction holdings. I’m glad Kay Ryan lives life quietly. And I’m glad she’s put her words into published form.
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).
Perhaps you’d like to know who our other poets laureate were. From the first, Joseph Auslander, to Kay Ryan, you could find this list as I did on Google, but I’ll save you the trouble.
I hear Billy Collins reading his poetry on Prairie Home Companion from time to time and I have met Donald Hall. But the rest, like our wonderful Kay Ryan, quietly glitter on my nearby bookstore and library shelves, with their suitcases open, waiting to take me on a quick holiday.
* Joseph Auslander, 1937-1941
* Allen Tate, 1943-1944
* Robert Penn Warren, 1944-1945
* Louise Bogan, 1945-1946
* Karl Shapiro, 1946-1947
* Robert Lowell, 1947-1948
* Leonie Adams, 1948-1949
* Elizabeth Bishop, 1949-1950
* Conrad Aiken, 1950-1952, the first to serve two terms
* William Carlos Williams, appointed in 1952 but did not serve
* Randall Jarrell, 1956-1958
* Robert Frost, 1958-1959
* Richard Eberhart, 1959-1961
* Louis Untermeyer, 1961-1963
* Howard Nemerov, 1963-1964
* Reed Whittemore, 1964-1965
* Stephen Spender, 1965-1966
* James Dickey, 1966-1968
* William Jay Smith, 1968-1970
* William Stafford, 1970-1971
* Josephine Jacobsen, 1971-1973
* Daniel Hoffman, 1973-1974
* Stanley Kunitz, 1974-1976
* Robert Hayden, 1976-1978
* William Meredith, 1978-1980
* Maxine Kumin, 1981-1982
* Anthony Hecht, 1982-1984
* Robert Fitzgerald, 1984-1985, appointed and served in a health-limited capacity, but did not come to the Library of Congress
* Reed Whittemore, 1984-1985, Interim Consultant in Poetry
* Gwendolyn Brooks, 1985-1986
* Robert Penn Warren, 1986-1987,first to be Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry
* Richard Wilbur, 1987-1988
* Howard Nemerov, 1988-1990
* Mark Strand, 1990-1991
* Joseph Brodsky, 1991-1992
* Mona Van Duyn, 1992-1993
* Rita Dove, 1993-1995
* Robert Hass, 1995-1997
* Robert Pinsky, 1997-2000
* Stanley Kunitz, 2000-2001
* Billy Collins, 2001-2003
* Louise Glück, 2003-2004
* Ted Kooser, 2004-2006
* Donald Hall, 2006-2007
*Charles Simic, 2007-2008
*Kay Ryan, 2008-2009
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