zephyrean

The Art of Poetry No. 94, Kay Ryan

rachelinuruguay — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 01:49:55 -0400

INTERVIEWER: How do you know a poem is successful?
RYAN: I guess when I’m not embarrassed.

The Art of Poetry No. 94, Kay Ryan

rachelinuruguay — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 01:48:05 -0400

INTERVIEWER: Has it been important for you to live an ordinary life?
RYAN: I think extravagance in your life takes the energy from possible extravagances in your mind.

The Art of Poetry No. 94, Kay Ryan

rachelinuruguay — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 01:42:23 -0400

INTERVIEWER: You and Carol have been married twice because of the changes in California’s marriage laws. Was it important for you two to be able to marry?

RYAN: It meant a lot in terms of human rights, especially to Carol. We’ve been together since 1979. When I first met Carol, I was so glad to find somebody I could really talk to. There were people who I could drop a stone down and hear it go plunk really fast. But I could drop a stone down Carol and never hear it hit the bottom.

"I’m rather shocked to look back at the way I thought of the prisoners at that time—as people with a..."

rachelinuruguay — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 01:39:03 -0400

“I’m rather shocked to look back at the way I thought of the prisoners at that time—as people with a lot of experience. Just because they’re killers and robbers and whatnot doesn’t mean they’ve had a lot of experience. It doesn’t take very long to kill somebody. I taught the Schoenfeld brothers. They buried a bus full of students for ransom. One day I was meeting with a student and he told me about some grotesque thing that he’d done, and I said something like, Well, you’re all fine fellows, so he wouldn’t think I was judging him. I’m sure I was trying to appear cool. I was bending over backwards as if to say, What’s past is past. We’re here to talk about English. I think I was trying to say, I’m not really thinking of you as the impossibly other. Well, I was, but I didn’t want him to think I was. He said, You know, we’re not here for singing out of tune in church.”

- Kay Ryan on teaching at San Quentin Prison, The Art of Poetry No. 94

"His white silk badge fluttered and fluttered as he worked at the next sum and heard Father Arnall’s..."

rachelinuruguay — Sun, 17 Mar 2013 14:40:37 -0400

“His white silk badge fluttered and fluttered as he worked at the next sum and heard Father Arnall’s voice. Then all his eagerness passed away and he felt his face quite cool. He thought his face must be white because it felt so cool. He could not get out the answer for the sum but it did not matter. White roses and red roses: those were beautiful colours to think of. And the cards for first place and second place and third place were beautiful colours too: pink and cream and lavender. Lavender and cream and pink roses were beautiful to think of. Perhaps a wild rose might be like those colours and he remembered the song about the wild rose blossoms on the little green place. But you could not have a green rose. But perhaps somewhere in the world you could.”

- A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce

~*In memory of one of my favorite Irishmen who endowed his youthful characters with such inspiring curiosity and wisdom.*~

"What’s recombinant rhyme? It’s like how they add a snip of the jellyfish’s glow-in-the-dark gene to..."

rachelinuruguay — Sun, 17 Mar 2013 07:20:00 -0400

“What’s recombinant rhyme? It’s like how they add a snip of the jellyfish’s glow-in-the-dark gene to bunnies and make them glow green; by snipping up pieces of sound and redistributing them throughout a poem I found I could get the poem to go a little bit luminescent.”

- Kay Ryan, Paris Review, The Art of Poetry No. 94

"I’d bought a tarot deck—this was the seventies—a standard one with a little accompanying book that..."

rachelinuruguay — Sun, 17 Mar 2013 07:17:00 -0400

“I’d bought a tarot deck—this was the seventies—a standard one with a little accompanying book that explained how to read the cards, lay them out, shuffle them—all those things. But I’m not a student and was totally impatient with learning anything about the cards. I thought they were just interesting to look at. But I did use the book’s shuffling method, which was very elaborate, and in the morning I’d turn one card over and whatever that card was I would write a poem about it. The card might be Love, or it might be Death. My game, or project, was to write as many poems as there were cards in the deck. But since I couldn’t control which cards came up, I’d write some over and over again and some I’d never see. That gave me range.  I always understood that to write poetry was to be totally exposed. But in the seventies I only had models of ripping off your clothes, and I couldn’t do that. My brain could be naked, but I didn’t want to be naked. Nor was I interested in the heart, or love. The tarot helped me see that I could write about anything—even love if required—and retain the illusion of not being exposed. If one is writing well, one is totally exposed. But at the same time, one has to feel thoroughly masked or protected.”

- Kay Ryan on how she developed a habit of writing

"…In these five attitudes there is no You: I-I, I-It, It-It, We-We, and Us-Them. There are many..."

rachelinuruguay — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 02:30:00 -0400

“…In these five attitudes there is no You: I-I, I-It, It-It, We-We, and Us-Them. There are many ways of living in a world without a You.”

- Walter Kaufmann’s Prologue to Martin Buber’s I and Thou

"Is it hard to make arrangements with yourself/when you’re old enough to repay/but young enough..."

rachelinuruguay — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 19:04:33 -0500

“Is it hard to make arrangements with yourself/when you’re old enough to repay/but young enough to sell?”

- Willie Nelson, “Tell Me Why”

Photo

rachelinuruguay — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 18:16:24 -0500

"I am my mother, but I’m not. I am my grandmother, but I’m not. I am my..."

rachelinuruguay — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 01:47:59 -0500

“I am my mother, but I’m not.
I am my grandmother, but I’m not.
I am my great-grandmother, but I’m not.”

- from When Women Were Birds, Terry Tempest Williams

"Because what every woman knows each month when she bleeds is, I am not pregnant. Because what every..."

rachelinuruguay — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 01:44:05 -0500

“Because what every woman knows each month when she bleeds is, I am not pregnant. Because what every woman understands each time she makes love is, Life could be in the making now. Which is why when a woman allows a man to enter her, it is not just a physical act, but an act of surrendering to the possibility that her life may no longer be hers alone. Because until she bleeds, she will check her womb every day for the stirrings of life. Because until she bleeds, she wonders if her life will be one or two or three. Because until she bleeds, she imagines every possibility from pleasure to pain to birth to death and how she will do what she needs to do, and until she bleeds, she will worry endlessly, until she bleeds.”

- from When Women Were Birds, Terry Tempest Williams

"True eloquence has an edge, sharp and clean."

rachelinuruguay — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 01:36:29 -0500

“True eloquence has an edge, sharp and clean.”

- When Women Were Birds: Fifty-Four Variations on Voice, Terry Tempest Williams

Surfaces

rachelinuruguay — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 01:17:40 -0500

Surfaces serve

their own purposes,

strive to remain

constant (all lives

want that). There is

a skin, not just on

peaches but on oceans

(note the telltale

slough of foam on beaches).

Sometimes it’s loose,

as in the case

of cats: you feel how a

second life slides

under it. Sometimes it

fits. Take glass.

Sometimes it outlasts

its underside. Take reefs.

The private lives of surfaces

are innocent, not devious.

Take the one-dimensional

belief of enamel in itself,

the furious autonomy

of luster (crush a pearl—

it’s powder), the whole

curious seamlessness

of how we’re each surrounded

and what it doesn’t teach.

-Kay Ryan

"Necessary it is to love to live and there are many manuals but in all important ways one is..."

rachelinuruguay — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 00:57:25 -0500

“Necessary it is to love to live
and there are many manuals
but in all important ways
one is on one’s own.”

- “Elegy on a Toy Piano,” Dean Young

SEEK ME OUT LOOK AT LOOK AT LOOK AT LOOK AT ME I’M ALL THE FISHES IN THE SEA WAKE ME UP GIVE...

rachelinuruguay — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 23:26:55 -0500

SEEK ME OUT

LOOK AT LOOK AT LOOK AT LOOK AT ME

I’M ALL THE FISHES IN THE SEA

WAKE ME UP

GIVE ME GIVE ME GIVE ME WHAT YOU GOT

IN YOUR MIND, IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT

"My heart’s made of parts of all that surround me And that’s why the devil just..."

rachelinuruguay — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 23:22:52 -0500

“My heart’s made of parts of all that surround me
And that’s why the devil just can’t get around me
Every single night’s alright, every single night’s a fight
And every single fight’s alright with my brain
I just want to feel everything, I just want to feel everything
I just want to feel everything, I just want to feel everything”

- “Every Single Night,” Fiona Apple

magic-of-cinema: Smultronstället 1955 / Ingmar Bergman

rachelinuruguay — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 22:36:14 -0500

magic-of-cinema:

Smultronstället 1955 / Ingmar Bergman

proustitute: Ingmar Bergman, Wild Strawberries, 1957

rachelinuruguay — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 22:35:51 -0500

proustitute:

Ingmar Bergman, Wild Strawberries, 1957

"You have a right to your actions, but never to your actions’ fruits. Act for the..."

rachelinuruguay — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 19:31:32 -0500

“You have a right to your actions,
but never to your actions’ fruits.
Act for the action’s sake.
And do not be attached to inaction.
—
Self-possessed, resolute, act
without any thought of results,
open to success or failure.
This equanimity is yoga.”

- The Bhagavad Gita, translated by Stephen Mitchell