Quotes by Kay Ryan

About Kay Ryan:

Kay Ryan is an American poet and educator. She has published seven volumes of poetry and an anthology of selected and new poems. From 2008 to 2010 she was the sixteenth United States Poet Laureate. In 2011 she was named a MacArthur Fellow and she won the Pulitzer Prize.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

BAIT GOAT There is a distance where magnets pull, we feel, having held them back. Likewise there is a distance where words attract. Set one out like a bait goat and wait and seven others will approach. But watch out: roving packs can pull your word a...

Kay Ryan

Birds that love high trees and winds and riding flailing branches hate ledges as gripless and narrow, so that a tail is not just no advantage but ridiculous, mashed vertical against the wall. You will have seen the way a bird who falls on skimpy plac...

Kay Ryan

There are high places that don’t invite us, sharp shapes, glacier-scraped faces, whole ranges whose given names slip off. Any such relation as we try to make refuses to take…I’m giddy with thinking where thinking can’t stick. No Names

Kay Ryan

The day misspent, the love misplaced, has inside it the seed of redemption. Nothing is exempt from resurrection.

Kay Ryan

One can't work/by limelight.//A bowlful/right at/one's elbow//produces no/more than/a baleful/glow against/the kitchen table.//The fruit purveyor's/whole unstable/pyramid//doesn't equal/what daylight did.

Kay Ryan

Gaps don't/just happen./There is a/generative element/inside them,/a welling motion/ as when cold/waters shoulder/up through/warmer oceans./And where gaps/choose to widen,/coordinates warp,/even in places/constant since/the oldest maps.

Kay Ryan

Not even waste/is inviolate./The day misspent,/the love misplaced,/has inside it/the seed of redemption./Nothing is exempt from resurrection.

Kay Ryan

A too closely watched flower/blossoms the wrong color./Excess attention to the jonquil/turns it gentian. Flowers/need it tranquil to get/their hues right. Some/only open at midnight.

Kay Ryan

Forgetting takes space./Forgotten matters displace/as much anything else as/anything else. We must/skirt unlabeled crates/as thought it made sense/and take them when we go/to other states.

Kay Ryan

If we have not struggled/as hard as we can/at our strongest/how will we sense/the shape of our losses/or know what sustains/us longest or name/what change costs us,/saying how strange/it is that one sector/of the self can step in/for another in troub...

Kay Ryan

Even in climes/without snow/one cannot go/foward sometimes./Things test you./You are part of/the Donners or/part of the rescue:/a muleteer in/earflaps; a/formerly hearty/Midwestern farmer/perhaps. Both/parties trapped/within sight/of the pass.

Kay Ryan

The satisfactions/of agreement are/immediate as sugar--/a melting of the/granular, a syrup/that lingers, shared/not singular./Many prefer it.

Kay Ryan

It's important to have your private enjoyments because sometimes that's all we have.

Kay Ryan

I have tried to live very quietly, so I could be happy.

Kay Ryan

Author Bio

  • NameKay Ryan
  • DescriptionAmerican poet
  • BornSeptember 21, 1945
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionPoet; Author
  • AwardsGuggenheim Fellowship; MacArthur Fellows Program; Pulitzer Prize For Poetry; National Humanities Medal