The Niagara River: Poems

by Kay Ryan

In the citation accompanying Kay's recent award of the prestigious Ruth Lilly Prize, Christine Wiman wrote: "Kay Ryan can take any subject and make it her own. Her poems-which combine extreme concision and formal expertise with broad subjects and deep feeling-could never be mistaken for anyone else's. Her work has the kind of singularity and sustained integrity that are very, very rare…. It's always a dicey business predicting the literary future…[but] for this reader, these poems feel as if there were built to last, and…they have the passion, precision and sheer weirdness to do so."

Salon compared the poems in Ryan's last collection to "Fabergé eggs, tiny, ingenious devices that inevitably conceal some hidden wonder." The exquisite poems in The Niagara River provide similarly hidden gems. Bafflingly effective, they seem too brief and blithe to pack so much wallop. Intense and relaxed at once, both buoyant and rueful, their singular music appeals to many people. Her poems, products of an immaculately off-kilter mind, have been featured everywhere from the Sunday funnies to New York subways to plaques at the zoo to the pages of The New Yorker.

• ISBN13: 9780802142221
• Publish Date: 29 September 2005
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 96
• Language: English

Reviews

[jamiereadthis]

I read this twice, three times if you count the poems I copied down in my notes. (Half the book.) The Salon quote in the description compares Ryan’s poems to Fabergé eggs, but I say that does them a disservice. I say they’re real eggs. Perfect, and delicate, yet made of stronger stuff than you’d think; crack one open and you get new life chirping or a meal for your bones.

The Well or The Cup
How can
you tell
at the start
what you
can give away
and what
you must hold
to your heart.
What is
the well
and what is
the cup. Some
people get
drunk up.