Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Announcing Attempts' Kay Ryan Week™ (starts tomorrow!)

Via this post, I recently read this essay entitled "Two Philosophical Poets: On T. S. Eliot and Kay Ryan". Well, I teach Eliot, and certainly know his work well. But the second name made me go Who?

Yeah, it turns out I shoulda known. Ryan was the poet laureate of the U.S. from 2008 - 2010; she won the Pulitzer Prize last year for her book The Best of It: New and Selected Poems; and she got a MacArthur genius grant last year. (Obviously, my Noble Readers -- all far better read than I -- will know all this already; I mention it just to remind my own future self, lest I carelessly forget.)

So I went and read some of her poems online and... wow, she's fabulous.* I was thinking of posting one of her poems as a "poem of the day", and couldn't decide which one, so I thought, heck with it: I'm doing a whole Kay Ryan week.

So tomorrow, February 1, is the first day of Kay Ryan Week™ here at Attempts: each day I'll post one of her poems. These won't be Considered Selections Of The Best of Her Work: as the above indicates, I don't know her work that well yet. Rather, these will be seven poems that have made me want to read more.

So come back tomorrow for a first dose of Ryan-week-y goodness! I'll also link to all the poems I post in this post, for future reference.

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* No, I don't think that follows from the list of honors in the previous paragraph. But in this case it happens to be true.

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