Kay Ryan: Poetry Reading! Feb.16th!

Poet Laureate KAY RYAN will be here Feb. 16th with the time and place to be announced later.

Buuut in anticipation for her poetry reading, here is some background on the wonderful Kay Ryan:

"Ryan was born in San Jose, California and was raised in several areas of the San Joaquin Valley and the Mojave Desert. After attending Antelope Valley College, she received bachelor's and master's degrees in English from University of California, Los Angeles. Since 1971, she has lived in Fairfax, California, and has taught English part time at the College of Marin in Kentfield. Carol Adair, who was also an instructor at the College of Marin, was Ryan's partner from 1978 through Adair's death in 2009.

Ryan published her sixth collection of poetry, The Niagara River, in 2005. Her first collection, Dragon Acts to Dragon Ends, was privately published in 1983 with the help of friends. While she found a commercial publisher for her second collection, Strangely Marked Metal (1985), her work went nearly unrecognized until the mid 1990s, when some of her poems were anthologized and the first reviews in national journals were published. She became widely recognized following her receipt of the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize in 2004.

In July 2008, the U.S. Library of Congress announced that Ryan would be the sixteenth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress for a one year term commencing in Autumn 2008. She succeeded Charles Simic. In April 2009, the Library announced that Ryan would serve a second one-year term extending through May 2010."

http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/352

Here is a sample poem:

Patience

Patience is

wider than one

once envisioned,

with ribbons

of rivers

and distant

ranges and

tasks undertaken

and finished

with modest

relish by

natives in their

native dress.

Who would

have guessed

it possible

that waiting

is sustainable-

a place with

its own harvests.

Or that in

time's fullness

the diamonds

of patience

couldn't be

distinguished

from the geniune

in brilliance

or hardness.