The Niagara River: Poems

by Kay Ryan

Book Overview

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 "Faberg 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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0802142222
• ISBN13: 9780802142221
• Release Date: August 2005
• Publisher: Grove Press
• Length: 96 Pages
• Weight: 0.34 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 5.5" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

The brief, free-verse vignettes cascade into defining, picturesque moments

Prize winning poet Kay Ryan presents The Niagara River, the latest entry in the Grove Press Poetry Series. The brief, free-verse vignettes cascade into defining, picturesque moments, perfectly capturing a thought, mote, or moment of time before thundering onward like the Niagara River itself. The result is a treat for poetry lovers of all persuasions. "Thin": How anything / is known / is so thin- / a skin of ice / over a pond / only birds might / confidently walk / upon. A bird's / worth of weight / or one bird-weight / of Wordsworth.

Sublime

I am a big fan of poetry and this book did not disappoint me. I live in Australia, and therefore am not exposed to what is au courant in the US anymore [originally from the US]. I saw Kay Ryan on the Lehrer Report which is broadcast over here. She was reading from this book, and I decided to buy a copy. The poems are earthy and touch places of the heart that elicit a sigh of recognition. It is good to read poetry that is open, uncoded and taps into our everyday experiences with such elegant simplicity.

Lyrical Modern American Poems

The poetry is contempory and uses traditional elements, such as occational rhyme. Wonderful images and subjects that linger in the mind the day after reading them.