Photo Friday: “Touch of Winter”

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Poet of the Year: Kay Ryan

As has been the case since the initial year of its appearance in 2007, each December One Poet’s Notes designates a “Poet of the Year.” At the close of each year, a poet whose notable work merited attention during the previous twelve months is selected for acknowledgment and appreciation.

As in the past, a number of outstanding poets have distinguished themselves during the calendar year to a degree that they deserved serious consideration for this annual recognition. However, one poet’s work garnered praise for the content and quality of poetry not only of the present, but also for poems throughout her career and for the promise of work to come. Therefore, Kay Ryan earns designation as the 2011 Poet of the Year.

Readers of One Poet’s Notes are aware of my appreciation for Kay Ryan’s poetry. In the opening of my 2007 review for Ryan’s collection The Niagara River, I wrote:

When I read Kay Ryan’s poetry, I am sometimes reminded of my first visit to a Jasper Johns retrospective exhibition at the Whitney Museum nearly three decades ago. I recall my initial reactions to all that artwork with images, symbols, and signs that seemed so ordinary upon a quick glance. The paintings of targets appeared merely as concentric circles on a square canvas, the different depictions of American flags or bronzed beer cans seemed nothing more than clever alterations of reality, and the stenciled letters spelling out “red” or “yellow” in colors at variance with their wording represented only an obvious attempt at irony. However, upon closer scrutiny the banal suddenly became a more complicated set of symbols or signs, each inviting viewers to see beyond an icon’s surface meanings and to seek deeper readings in its unconventional appearance. I concluded an additional aspect of wit made the experience linger and even more enjoyable. As John Ashbery has written of Jasper Johns, “One may puzzle over his pictures, but one does not escape them.”

Similarly, Kay Ryan’s work proves puzzling upon opening her new book, The Niagara River; nevertheless, the brief and spare style, familiar from her past collections, remains with the reader and seeps into one’s thoughts about poetry in much the same way Johns’s art has become a reliable part of contemporary consciousness. Ryan’s deceptively straightforward yet complex and smart poems arise from a seemingly simple pattern of slender, usually unbroken, stanzas written in a plain and accessible vocabulary. Despite line breaks that sometimes seem haphazard or normally might create jerkiness as one reads through the poem, this poet appears always in full control, and the lines display a surprising fluency aided by subtle alliteration or other lyrical devices, often including nearly-hidden internal rhymes or near-rhymes.

Like Jasper Johns, Ryan frequently focuses upon objects or language with which we are so familiar that we may have forgotten to pay much attention any longer, forcing a fresh look. Perhaps no other poet, except Ashbery, brings back to life dull and overused terms or platitudinous sayings as often and as well as Kay Ryan. In Ryan’s poetry, clichéd and hackneyed phrases become sources of inspiration. Poems in The Niagara River arise from reexamination of chickens coming home to roost, the elephant in the room, the other shoe dropping, one’s being green behind the ears, and other elements of well-known expressions. However, Ryan manages to infuse new blood into these dead idioms so that they exist with a sense of lively eloquence, clever wit, and original imagery within the lines of her poetry.

Following publication of The Niagara River, Kay Ryan was selected as the U.S. Poet Laureate, a position she held for two terms. Upon closing her service as Poet Laureate in 2010, she released The Best of It: New and Selected Poems (Grove Press), a volume that was widely praised by critics and was named a finalist for the 2011 National Book Critics Circle award in poetry, as well as the 2011 winner of the Pulitzer Prize in poetry. The citation for the Pulitzer Prize notes that her new book reveals a poet who has produced “a body of work spanning 45 years, witty, rebellious and yet tender, a treasure trove of an iconoclastic and joyful mind.”

In a New York Times review of the book, Dwight Garner described Ryan’s poetry: “Kay Ryan’s poems are as slim as runway models, so tiny you could almost tweet them. Their compact refinement, though, does not suggest ease or chic. Her voice is quizzical and impertinent, funny in uncomfortable ways, scuffed by failure and loss. Her mastery, like Emily Dickinson’s, has some awkwardness in it, some essential gawkiness that draws you close.” Adam Kirsch commented for The New Yorker: “Melancholy lucidity is Ryan’s greatest gift, and it can be heard in all her most successful poems. But her most startling discovery is that melancholy, with its tendency to brood and spread, is best contained in a form that is tight, witty, almost sprightly sounding. Her poems are often built on the logic of the pun, taking an ordinary word or dead cliché as a title and then jolting it to unexpected life.” In The Hudson Review David Mason contributed: “Kay Ryan is so disarming, so fresh and original, that she has earned her recent reputation as one of the very best poets among us.”

In addition to the praise for her recent book and the critical recognition for her accumulation of remarkable poetry over the years, Kay Ryan also received a MacArthur Fellowship this year, an honor that indicates continuing support for her future writing as well, as Ryan notes in the video above. The MacArthur Fellowship cited Kay Ryan as “an accomplished poet whose immediately distinctive and tightly woven verse is grounded in incisive explorations of seemingly familiar language, ideas, and experiences. Independent from schools of poetry and literary fashion, her mode of expression is a disarmingly clear and accessible style, characterized by concision, rhyme, wordplay, and wit.” Speaking to the future, the citation goes on to remark: “Drawing from the puns and implications of everyday speech to achieve a wide range of effects, Ryan conveys emotional intensity and intellectual heft in poems that are rarely longer than a page. This inventive poet has already created a distinguished body of work and will continue to compose deceptively simple verse of wisdom and elegance, surprising us with the possibilities of the medium.”

Kay Ryan published her first major book of poetry in 1985 at the age of forty. In the past 25 years she has released a half dozen other books. Over the past quarter century, readers and critics have discovered her delightfully disarming poetry. In addition to this year’s honors, Ryan has received a number of commendations in the past decade, including a Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and a Maurice English Poetry Award. She was also elected as a Chancellor for the Academy of American Poets in 2006, where she continues to serve.

Upon her recent completion of two terms as U.S. Poet Laureate, publication of a volume of new and selected poetry, nomination as a finalist for the 2011 National Book Critics Circle Award, selection as the winner of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize, and designation as a 2011 MacArthur Fellow, Kay Ryan has achieved a greater and greatly deserved level of critical acclaim as well as a wider, more appreciative readership, with a promise—as stated in the accompanying video above—of more wonderful work in the future for readers to anticipate.


[Readers are invited to visit posts at One Poet’s Notes in the past that have announced the “Poet of the Year”: “Poet of the Year: John Ashbery” (2007), “Poet of the Year: Mark Doty” (2008), and “Poet of the Year: W.S. Merwin” (2009), “Poet of the Year: Rae Armantrout” (2010).]

Helen Frankenthaler 1928-2011

Upon learning the news about Helen Frankenthaler’s death yesterday at the age of 83, I thought I would remind readers that her woodcut triptych, Madame Butterfly, served as the cover artwork for the Fall/Winter 2001-2002 issue (Volume III, Number 1) of Valparaiso Poetry Review. Since this issue of VPR was released only a few weeks after the 9/11 events, I believed a light and promising image was ideal for the cover as a contrast to the daily scenes seen on television and in newspapers at that time.

As always, Gregg Hertzlieb, the Director of the Brauer Museum of Art, kindly provided a commentary complementing the artwork, the opening of which I include below:

Helen Frankenthaler (born 1928) is a world-renowned abstract artist whose work heralded in painting’s next significant phase after abstract expressionism in the 1940’s. Rather than apply paint in a thick, gestural manner, Frankenthaler chose to stain her canvases with broad expanses of veil-like color that give her finished works a transcendent, mystical glow. Her work is seldom about a distinct figure-ground relationship; instead, the expanses of color immerse the viewer in a space where each passage is of equal weight in a shimmering, decentered field. Frankenthaler’s early efforts would eventually inspire more austere approaches in the 1960’s and 1970’s, where painters would suppress painterly gesture even further to focus solely on color relationships.

Frankenthaler’s Madame Butterfly, a woodcut triptych printed in 2000, is a large work (41 3/4 x 79 1/2 inches) of remarkable complexity. . . .

I encourage visitors to remember Helen Frankenthaler by viewing her works of art, and I urge everyone to read the rest of Gregg Hertzlieb’s commentary.

Michael Lavers: “One Version of a Dream”

The VPR Poem of the Week is Michael Lavers’ “One Version of a Dream,” which appeared in the Fall/Winter 2010-2011 issue (Volume XII, Number 1) of Valparaiso Poetry Review.

Michael Lavers completed an MFA from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University, and he has poems published in various literary journals, including Tar River Poetry, River Styx, and Birmingham Poetry Review.

Tuesday of each week One Poet’s Notes highlights an excellent work by a poet selected from the issues of Valparaiso Poetry Review, except when other posts with news or updates preempt the usual appearance of this item, with the recommendation that readers visit it.

Remembering Vachel Lindsay at Christmas

I will light the candles now.

Vachel Lindsay—a Midwesterner from Springfield, Illinois, who was born in a home once belonging to an in-law of Abraham Lincoln and where the just elected president received his farewell party before departing for Washington—lived a life that could provide Hollywood with an interesting script chronicling an engaging character. Throughout most of his adult years, Lindsay sought to present poetry in an entertaining fashion. Perhaps a predecessor to today’s performance poets, Lindsay traveled all across the country for long stretches of time, journeying mostly on foot in stints throughout the Midwest and along the West Coast, as well as hiking through Glacier National Park—an experience that resulted in a thematic book of nature poetry (Going-to-the-Sun, 1923).

He usually survived by singing or chanting his poems, written with characteristically strong rhythms, sonorous sounds, and distinctly incantatory language. As he traveled from town to town, he also traded printed copies of his pieces for food or a place to sleep. Indeed, he has been linked to Langston Hughes in their popularizing of musical lyricism based upon the rhythms of blues or riffs of jazz, and readers will find on the University of Pennsylvania’s PennSound site (located at the Center for Programs in Creative Writing) a treasure of audio recordings in which Lindsay can be heard performing his poetry.

This populist poet, often compared with fellow Midwesterner Carl Sandburg, viewed himself as a critic of contemporary society. In fact, Vachel Lindsay’s most famous and most infamous poem, “The Congo” (1914), represented his attempt to promote awareness of African Americans. In other poems he exposed the poverty and the plight African Americans faced under the social conditions they endured in the early twentieth century throughout the United States. Unfortunately, stereotypical depictions and racially offensive language (especially by today’s standards) included in the poem caused Lindsay to receive much harsh criticism, particularly from some in the black community.

However, Lindsay saw himself as an advocate for civil rights and would champion African Americans in other poems as well. He sent a letter to the chairman of the board of directors of the NAACP defending his poetry: “The third section of ‘The Congo’ is certainly as hopeful as any human being dare to be in regard to any race.” In fact, considering the work and the author’s intentions more favorably, Langston Hughes (whom it is said may have been discovered and promoted by Vachel Lindsay) later chose to anthologize the controversial piece. (Lindsay’s rendering of “The Congo” is one of those preserved among the samples at the PennSound website.)

After beginning college with a desire to follow his father’s footsteps as a doctor, Lindsay found more pleasure and personal satisfaction in painting. Therefore, like William Blake, he then turned to a career as an artist, studying at the Chicago Institute of Art and the New York School of Art, and as Blake had done, Lindsay sometimes claimed to have mystical visions he attempted to transform to images in his drawings.

Throughout his life, Vachel Lindsay exhibited eccentric behavior and held to idealistic thinking, hoping his work would eventually be well received and exert a powerful influence over many, leading toward social and cultural changes benefiting the weak and the forgotten. In 1913, Harriet Monroe published in Poetry magazine perhaps his most successful poem, “General William Booth Enters Heaven,” in which he elegizes the founder of the Salvation Army who had died in 1912. Composer Charles Ives made the poem even more famous when he set the it to music in 1914. (This poem also can be heard at the PennSound website.)

However, later in life when finally faced with intense pain of personal adversity and the prospect of professional failure because of an inability to attract great popular or critical attention for his newer poetry, Lindsay’s story came to a tragic end. In December of 1931, at the age of 52 and having returned to live in the same Springfield home where he had been born, suffering poor health and depression, he committed suicide by drinking a bottle of poison. Lindsay’s stature at the time was such that Edgar Lee Masters wrote a biography of him in 1935, but Lindsay’s importance as a poet has declined over the decades since then.

Nevertheless, in this December 80 years after his death, I invite readers to take the opportunity to recall Vachel Lindsay’s life with one of his works offering a more cheerful and festive spirit:

THIS SECTION IS A CHRISTMAS TREE

This section is a Christmas tree:
Loaded with pretty toys for you.
Behold the blocks, the Noah's arks,
The popguns painted red and blue.
No solemn pine-cone forest-fruit,
But silver horns and candy sacks
And many little tinsel hearts
And cherubs pink, and jumping-jacks.
For every child a gift, I hope.
The doll upon the topmost bough
Is mine. But all the rest are yours.
And I will light the candles now.

. . . . . —Vachel Lindsay

Photo Friday: “Late Autumn at Twilight”

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“Winter Pentimento” from TINTED DISTANCES

With the official arrival of winter overnight tonight, I offer a wintry poem from Tinted Distances (Turning Point Books, 2011), my current collection of poetry:

WINTER PENTIMENTO

The black clot of an empty nest rests
. . . . . in one fork of this winter tree, all its

thin branches now white and bending
. . . . . under the weight of a new snowfall.

Spots of cloud cover still fill the ridge
. . . . . line, their lengthening shadows drawn

across a hill’s little drifts or flat patches

. . . . . of brown lawn that had been exposed

by this morning’s wind like vivid traces

. . . . . of an earlier layer of stain. Before long,

the vague sunshine finally fails to filter

. . . . . through even these few remaining knots

of cumulus and gives way to gradually

. . . . . changing shades of gray, as if the faded

landscape has been painted over once

. . . . . more, the stripe of horizon taken away

by feathered edges brushed under soft

. . . . . strokes in pigments granting a darker tint.

I invite readers to discover more about the poetry in Tinted Distances, and I remind everyone that the volume is available for purchase.

E.G. Burrows: “The Beach at Moon’s Resort”

The VPR Poem of the Week is E.G. Burrows’ “The Beach at Moon’s Resort,” which appeared in the Fall/Winter 2006-2007 issue (Volume VIII, Number 1) of Valparaiso Poetry Review.

E.G. Burrows was the author of various poetry collections, including The Arctic Tern and Other Poems, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. In addition, he wrote a verse play and five chapbooks. His poetry also appeared in many literary journals, including Asheville Review, Comstock Review, Grove Review, Pebble Lake Review, River Oak Review, South Carolina Review, South Dakota Review, and Sulphur River Review. Edwin G. Burrows passed away last month at the age of 94.

Tuesday of each week One Poet’s Notes highlights an excellent work by a poet selected from the issues of Valparaiso Poetry Review, except when other posts with news or updates preempt the usual appearance of this item, with the recommendation that readers visit it.

Photo Friday: “December Pond”

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Athena Kildegaard: “In the Kirkegaard, December”

The VPR Poem of the Week is Athena Kildegaard’s “In the Kirkegaard, December,” which appeared in the Spring/Summer 2011 issue (Volume XII, Number 2) of Valparaiso Poetry Review.

Athena Kildegaard has had work appear in Faultline, Drunken Boat, Poetry East, Puerto del Sol, Cream City Review, Tar River Poetry, and elsewhere. Her first book, Rare Momentum, was published by Red Dragonfly Press, as will the forthcoming collection, Bodies of Light.

Tuesday of each week One Poet’s Notes highlights an excellent work by a poet selected from the issues of Valparaiso Poetry Review, except when other posts with news or updates preempt the usual appearance of this item, with the recommendation that readers visit it.

Photo Friday: “Chapel Façade”

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W.F. Lantry: “Requiem”

Usually on Tuesday readers find here a Poem of the Week from the archives of Valparaiso Poetry Review. However, as a celebration of the new literary journal, Valparaiso Fiction Review, which was launched this week, today’s highlighted piece is W.F. Lantry’s “Requiem,” a short story that exists as a brief work of poetic prose from the contents of VFR’s inaugural Winter 2011 issue, where the story is also available as a pdf download file.

W.F. Lantry, a native of San Diego, is the recipient of the Paris/Atlantic Young Writers Award, and in 2010 won the Lindberg Foundation International Poetry for Peace Prize, the Crucible Editors’ Poetry Prize and the CutBank Patricia Goedicke Prize. His work has appeared in Gulf Coast, Anemone Sidecar, Literal Latté, Istanbul Literary Review, Blip, and Aesthetica. He currently works in Washington, DC and is a contributing editor of Umbrella: A Journal of Poetry and Kindred Prose.

I invite everyone to examine this introduction of Valparaiso Fiction Review to read the fine stories in its initial issue.

VALPARAISO FICTION REVIEW: Inaugural Issue

I am delighted to announce release of the Winter 2011 issue of Valparaiso Fiction Review, published by the Department of English and Christopher Center for Library and Information at Valparaiso University. This inaugural issue of the journal contains compositions of short fiction by Andrea Dupree, Clifford Garstang, W.F. Lantry, Meg Tuite, Norman Waksler, and Dallas Woodburn. I encourage everyone to examine this introduction of VFR and read these fine stories.

I want to thank co-editor Jonathan Bull for his wonderful work that made appearance of this literary journal possible. I am also grateful for the tremendous efforts by our assistant editors: Emily Bahr, Ethan Grant, Rob Onofrey, Ellen Orner, and Jeremy Reed.

Valparaiso Fiction Review (VFR) is now accepting submissions of original short fiction by new, emerging, or established writers for the Spring and Winter 2012 issues. Authors are encouraged to visit VFR and follow the guidelines for submission.

Poem Today at VERSE DAILY and Other Sites

I am pleased to note that “Midnight Winds,” a poem from my most recent collection of poems, Tinted Distances, is featured today at Verse Daily. In addition, there is a bio and bibliography page at the site that contains a number of links to nearly 20 other poems of mine available for viewing at various locations online. I invite everyone to browse the poetry, and I extend my thanks to the editors at Verse Daily.

Photo Friday: “November Leaves”

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“Fall Walk at Forest Park” from Autism: A Poem

As mentioned previously, I have created a separate and temporary blog site as an open experiment of poetry composition, perhaps a glimpse at an emerging manuscript as it matures. The contents represent portions of an ongoing personal project with a particularly narrow focus intended to develop toward a book-length sequence of poetry with the tentative working title of Autism.

The sequence has grown as sections have been added. The individual pieces are designed so that they may be viewed as independent items; however, I have consciously carried themes, images, and language through the extended sequence with the hope that connectivity and continuity will be preserved among numerous sections.

I have now posted a new section, “Fall Walk at Forest Park.”

Readers are asked to regard Autism as a work in progress, a partial or rough draft rather than a finished product (even if some selected segments previously may have appeared in print), and I request everyone realize various edits, emendations, or expansion may be made to the individual posts at any time in the future. Moreover, at some point the entire sequence will be removed to undergo a complete revision.

In addition, I would like to remind readers that a portion of this poetry series in progress was released in March as Dark Refuge, an audio chapbook by Whale Sound. The dozen poems in that chapbook represent a narrative designed as a poetic sequence, part of this overall project of poetry I have been composing about particular observations or impressions concerning the characteristics and consequences associated with autism through a poetic chronicling of personal experiences with Alex.

Dark Refuge is available for readers to experience in differing formats: as online audio, online text, free downloadable mp3, pdf, e-book, print edition, and cd. Therefore, I also urge readers to visit the main page for Dark Refuge.