Unpacking the Suitcase: The Poetry of Kay Ryan

"A poem should act like an empty suitcase."      — Kay Ryan

The other night, I sat in the third row at our largest auditorium, listening to U.S. Poet Laureate Kay Ryan read. Her measured, little poems could go by in an instant and you'd only be left with the sound of a few words on your tongue. She was aware of the audience's limited attention spans and the brevity of her poems, so she reread a few (as much, I think, for her benefit as our own). 

The man who introduced her, Atsuro Riley, also a poet, and clearly enamored of her words, used the word "thinky-ness" to describe her. Truly, this is a poet who needs facts to make the trip worthwhile. Bit by bit, she removes the contents of what we think we know of an old saying, an observation or a cliché, and replaces them with what she calls "recombinant rhymes" (slant rhymes and internal rhymes, not end rhymes), puns and deep insight. She giggles. She said "goody." She likes jokes and she likes Emily Dickinson.


Yes, I said those in the same sentence. This is a complicated poet, one that makes us work and wonder, even as we're getting excited about the simple fact that we're going on a journey.


Speaking of suitcases, Riley asked Ryan to end with this glorious poem: 




Turtle by Kay Ryan 
(from Flamingo Watching, Copper Beach Press)


Who would be a turtle who could help it?
A barely mobile hard roll, a four-oared helmet,
She can ill afford the chances she must take
In rowing toward the grasses that she eats.
Her track is graceless, like dragging 
A packing-case places, and almost any slope
Defeats her modest hopes. Even being practical,
She’s often stuck up to the axle on her way
To something edible. With everything optimal,
She skirts the ditch which would convert
Her shell into a serving dish. She lives
Below luck-level, never imagining some lottery
Will change her load of pottery to wings.
Her only levity is patience,
The sport of truly chastened things.