Flamingo Watching by Kay Ryan

Source of book: Borrowed from the library

 

One of those random books out on display that I grabbed. Kay Ryan was Poet Laureate from 2008 to 2010, and won a MacArthur Grant and a Pulitzer. The book I found is an anthology, but, as I usually do, I selected a single collection and went with that. In this case, I chose Flamingo Watching from 1994. 

 

Ryan was also the first openly lesbian US poet laureate. 

 

I found the poems to be intriguing, and often creative and witty. They are short, and compressed. I didn’t always feel like they were the most musical, but engaged more at the level of a puzzle to be solved than music. This isn’t a criticism - poetry comes in many forms, and meaning is never limited to the form or feel. 

 

The strength of Ryan’s writing is the quirky internal rhymes, the unexpected metaphor, and the wry wit that often takes a second or third reading to appreciate. 

 

I did find a number that I liked. 

 

This Life

 

It’s a pickle, this life. 

Even shut down to a trickle

it carries every kind of particle

that causes strife on a grander scale:

to be miniature is to be swallowed

by a miniature whale. Zeno knew 

the law that we know: no matter

how carefully diminished, a race

can only be half finished with success:

then comes the endless halving of the rest - 

the ribbon’s stalled approach, the helpless

red-faced urgings of the coach. 

 

A bit too much truth there, perhaps. We strive, yet we never arrive. Hey, that’s an internal rhyme too…

 

Every Painting by Chagall

 

Every twined groom and bride,

every air fish, smudged Russian,

red horse, yellow chicken, assumes

its position not actually beside

but in some friendly distribution

with a predictable companion.

Every canvas insists on a 

similar looseness, each neck

put to at least two uses. And wings

from some bottomless wing source.

They are pleasure wings of course

since any horse or violinist

may mount the blue 

simply by wanting to.

(In freedom, dear things

repeat without tedium.)

 

I do like Chagall, at a visceral level - and this is one of the best distillations of how his paintings often work. And also why we remain fascinated by Chagall. 

 

This next one is related, and also, in my opinion, one of the deepest poems in this collection. 

 

Leaving Spaces

 

It takes a courageous

person to leave spaces

empty. Certainly any

artist in the Middle Ages

felt this timor, and quickly

covered space over 

with griffins, sea serpents,

herbs and brilliant carpets

of flowers - things pleasant

or unpleasant, no matter.

Of course they were cowards

and patronized by cowards

who liked their swards as 

filled with birds as leaves.

All of them believed in

sudden edges and completely

barren patches in the mind, 

and they didn’t want to 

think about them all the time. 

 

This speaks to me about my Fundie upbringing as well. So much fear of leaving empty spaces - of acknowledging the unknown, the uncontrollable, the secret. And then there is this one:

 

Emptiness

 

Emptiness cannot be 

compressed. Nor can it

fight abuse. Nor is there

an endless West hosting

elk, antelope, and the 

tough cayuse. This is

true also of the mind:

it can get used. 

 

This next one is also good. 

 

A Certain Kind of Eden

 

It seems like you could, but

you can’t go back and pull

the roots and runners and replant.

It’s all too deep for that.

You’ve overprized intention,

have mistaken any bent you’re given

for control. You thought you chose

the bean and chose the soil.

You even thought you abandoned

one or two gardens. But those things

keep growing where we put them - 

if we put them at all.

A certain kind of Eden holds us thrall.

Even the one vine that tendrils out alone

in time turns on its own impulse,

twisting back down its upward course

a strong and then a stronger rope,

the greenest saddest strongest 

kind of hope. 

 

Nature in general is a significant source of metaphor to Ryan - both plant an animal. Here is another plant-based one. 

 

So Different

 

A tree is lightly connected 

to its blossoms.

For a tree it is is

a pleasant sensation

to be stripped

of what’s white and winsome.

If a big wind comes,

any nascent interest in fruit

scatters. This is so different 

from humans, for whom 

what is un-set matters 

so oddly - as though

only what is lost held possibility. 

 

That last last line is so good. 

 

Force

 

Nothing forced works.

The Gordian knot just worsens

if it’s jerked at by a person.

One of the main stations

of the cross is patience.

Another, of course, is impatience.

There is such a thing as

too much tolerance

for unpleasant situations,

a time when the gentle 

teasing out of threads

ceases to be pleasing 

to a woman born for conquest.

Instead she must assault

the knot or alp or everest

with something sharp

and take upon herself

the moral warp of sudden progress. 

 

I’ll end with one of a few poems about snakes. Ryan clearly shares my love for slithery reptiles. 

 

Snake Charm

 

Oh for even a fingerling snake,

a three-inch inspiration full of 

genetic information about length,

the making of venom, and the start

of muscles later on used for compression.

A snake, say, in a Moorish pattern, abstract,

ornamental, repeatable over a whole Toledo

without tedium. Yes, a snake the sun stretches,

a snake that improves everything it catches:

the adventitious mouse converted to stripes

or diamond patches. This snake is reckless,

with no concern for balance. It can

slide over any surface, a silent line,

an endless pattern, a generative rhyme. 

 

Well, that’s a good taste of Kay Ryan, and a fun contrast with some of the other poems I have been reading lately. And also a good reminder to me to avoid stagnating with the old guys from long ago, and read something from my own lifetime now and again.