Kay Ryan

Named Poet Laureate in 2008, Kay Ryan is known for her compact, witty, and yet highly-accessible poetry. Her work has been likened to that of Marianne Moore and Emily Dickinson. Ryan's poems work to

We're Building the Ship as We Sail It

by Kay Ryan (b. 1945)

1<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
2<author>
3  <person id="22618" sex="2" role="author">
4    <name>
5      <firstname>Kay</firstname>
6      <lastname>Ryan</lastname>
7    </name>
8    <life-events>
9      <date ty="birth" circa="false" suffix="ad">1945</date>
10      <text-value>(b. 1945)</text-value>
11    </life-events>
12    <biography>y</biography>
13  </person>
14</author>
15

 The first fear 
 being drowning, the 
 ship's first shape 
 was a raft, which 
 was hard to unflatten 
 after that didn't 
 happen. It's awkward 
 to have to do one's 
 planning   in extremis  

Click here for complete poem

Poets Book of Days

September 21

Ernest Fenollosa died, 1908

View Calendar of Days

Poetry Trivia

Question:

For what does Oulipo stand?

Answer

Ouvroir de littérature potentielle (Workshop of potential literature). Founded by Raymond Queneau, with its members including Italo Calvino, Oskar Pastior and Jacques Roubaud, Oulipo believed in composing its literary works under arbitrary constraints.

Previous Trivia Questions

Follow @cupgrangers