The Washington Post reports today that Kay Ryan will be named the new U.S. Poet Laureate. Here’s a profile, along with a sample of her work.
This sounds like an interesting way to approach difficult material:
“Back in California, still shying away from difficult themes "like heart," Ryan assigned herself a task: She would get out a pack of tarot cards, turn one card over every day and write a poem from it. "So I had to start dealing with these abstractions like love, death, the wheel of fortune."
And for those of us who take comfort in long struggles for recognition:
“It took her eight years to get a poem accepted at a serious poetry magazine and 10 more to get into the New Yorker.”
