Kay Ryan: 16th Poet Laureate USA
Kay
Ryan, who was named the sixteenth poet laureate of the United States in July,
lives in Fairfax, California, where for more than thirty years she has taught
remedial English part-time at the College of Marin at Kentfield. She is often
referred to as a poetry “outsider” and underdog. She resists writing in the
first person, preferring to write personal poems “in such a way that nobody has
to know it.” In lieu of narrative and biography, she uses irony and humor to
unravel the idiosyncrasies of language and the haplessness of human existence.
She is fond of malapropisms and clichés, two linguistic devices that many poets
consider taboo. She employs what she calls “recombinant rhyme”—hidden rhymes
that appear
