Elephant Rocks: Poems

Rating:
Summary: Witty, Edgy, Beautiful
Review: I loved this book. Kay Ryan's poems are very short, but they pack so much ambiguous meaning in a few lines. They're quite unusual among contemporary poetry: epigrammatic, terse, very accessible, almost light verse, but with shadows flickering all around. I give this book to friends who say they "don't get modern poetry" and that modern poetry makes them feel stupid. If you like Stevie Smith or the short verses of Robert Frost, you'll love Elephant Rocks. Here's a short one, called "Silence":

Silence is not snow./ It cannot grow/ deeper. A thousand years/ of it are thinner/ than paper. so/ we must have it/ all wrong/ when we feel trapped/ like mastodons.

Rating:
Summary: Witty, Edgy, Beautiful
Review: I loved this book. Kay Ryan's poems are very short, but they pack so much ambiguous meaning in a few lines. They're quite unusual among contemporary poetry: epigrammatic, terse, very accessible, almost light verse, but with shadows flickering all around. I give this book to friends who say they "don't get modern poetry" and that modern poetry makes them feel stupid. If you like Stevie Smith or the short verses of Robert Frost, you'll love Elephant Rocks. Here's a short one, called "Silence":

Silence is not snow./ It cannot grow/ deeper. A thousand years/ of it are thinner/ than paper. so/ we must have it/ all wrong/ when we feel trapped/ like mastodons.

Rating:
Summary: Kay Ryan is the best poet now at work in America.
Review: Once every couple of generations, an original thinker manages to refresh an art form that had seemed exhausted. Kay Ryan has done this with poetry. Her poems rhyme--but not in the ways and places you expect. They're metrical--but only according to the author's own quirky standard. They're short, tight, and disciplined--and yet they allow language to sprawl and luxuriate. Best of all, they're musical. Not a single one of them bounces along in a stanzaic quatrain the way a traditional lyric would; instead, these poems are densely packed, with beautiful interior rhymes and echoes chiming away in a miniature space.

One final paradox: Although these poems are not confessional (they do not contain personal remembrances, hurts, or hopes), they gradually reveal an intensely individual mind--a lucid, generous, and humorous one.

In my opinion Kay is the best, most beautiful poet working in the English language today. She has quietly reinvented rhyming poetry according to her own peculiar--but very logical--rules. I consider her best poems to be miraculous.

In admiration,

Henry Rathvon

Rating:
Summary: Kay Ryan is the best poet now at work in America.
Review: Once every couple of generations, an original thinker manages to refresh an art form that had seemed exhausted. Kay Ryan has done this with poetry. Her poems rhyme--but not in the ways and places you expect. They're metrical--but only according to the author's own quirky standard. They're short, tight, and disciplined--and yet they allow language to sprawl and luxuriate. Best of all, they're musical. Not a single one of them bounces along in a stanzaic quatrain the way a traditional lyric would; instead, these poems are densely packed, with beautiful interior rhymes and echoes chiming away in a miniature space.

One final paradox: Although these poems are not confessional (they do not contain personal remembrances, hurts, or hopes), they gradually reveal an intensely individual mind--a lucid, generous, and humorous one.

In my opinion Kay is the best, most beautiful poet working in the English language today. She has quietly reinvented rhyming poetry according to her own peculiar--but very logical--rules. I consider her best poems to be miraculous.

In admiration,

Henry Rathvon