Kay Ryan Quotes & Sayings

Forgetting takes space./Forgotten matters displace/as much anything else as/anything else. We must/skirt unlabeled crates/as thought it made sense/and take them when we go/to other states. — Kay Ryan

The Self Is Not Portable
The self is not
portable. It
cannot be packed.
It comes sneaking
back to any place
from which it's
been extracted,
for it is nothing alone.
It is not an entity.
The ratio of self
to home: one part
in seventy. — Kay Ryan

Gaps don't/just happen./There is a/generative element/inside them,/a welling motion/
as when cold/waters shoulder/up through/warmer oceans./And where gaps/choose to widen,/coordinates warp,/even in places/constant since/the oldest maps. — Kay Ryan

I don't think any poetry is written that isn't primarily written to the self, in a way ... I'm always talking to myself. But I seem to want somebody else to listen to it. I need, I do want an audience. So it's a strange thing. It's a very private conversation that then, you make public, kind of like the starfish flipping its stomach out. — Kay Ryan

A too closely watched flower/blossoms the wrong color./Excess attention to the jonquil/turns it gentian. Flowers/need it tranquil to get/their hues right. Some/only open at midnight. — Kay Ryan

The dead do not
become stars or ghosts.
in fact, they are
hardly undone.
Soon their randomly
dispersed parts
reappear one
by one on
foreign hosts-
the beloved ear
or freckled arm,
separate as a
milagro or bracelet
charm. It is not
grotesque, though
odd. Even a piece
does us some good.
Charms — Kay Ryan

It's important to have your private enjoyments because sometimes that's all we have. — Kay Ryan

What keeps me writing is that I can only know through writing. My major sense organ is apparently a pencil. — Kay Ryan

No Names
There are high places
that don't invite us,
sharp shapes, glacier-
scraped faces, whole
ranges whose given names
slip off. Any such relation
as we try to make
refuses to take. Some
high lakes are not for us,
some slick escarpments.
I'm giddy with thinking
where thinking can't stick. — Kay Ryan

Small presses take chances. Chances are at the heart of all the literature we later know as great. — Kay Ryan

If we have not struggled/as hard as we can/at our strongest/how will we sense/the shape of our losses/or know what sustains/us longest or name/what change costs us,/saying how strange/it is that one sector/of the self can step in/for another in trouble,/how loss activates/a latent double, how/we can feed/as upon nectar/upon need? — Kay Ryan

I simply want to celebrate the fact that right near your home, year in and year out, a community college is quietly - and with very little financial encouragement - saving lives and minds. I can't think of a more efficient, hopeful or egalitarian machine, expect perhaps the bicycle. — Kay Ryan

A thing cannot be delivered enough times:
this is the rule of dogs for whom there are no fool's errands.
To loop out and come back is good all alone.
It's gravy to carry a ball or a bone. — Kay Ryan

Ledge

Birds that love
high trees
and winds

and riding
flailing branches
hate ledges
as gripless
and narrow,

so that a tail
is not just
no advantage
but ridiculous,
mashed vertical
against the wall.
You will have
seen the way
a bird who falls
on skimpy places

lifts into the air
again in seconds --
a gift denied
the rest of us
when our portion
isn't generous. — Kay Ryan

Even in climes/without snow/one cannot go/foward sometimes./Things test you./You are part of/the Donners or/part of the rescue:/a muleteer in/earflaps; a/formerly hearty/Midwestern farmer/perhaps. Both/parties trapped/within sight/of the pass. — Kay Ryan

There are high places that don't invite us, sharp shapes, glacier-scraped faces, whole ranges whose given names slip off. Any such relation as we try to make refuses to take ... I'm giddy with thinking where thinking can't stick.
No Names — Kay Ryan

A certain kind of Eden holds us thrall. — Kay Ryan

It isn't ever delicate to live. — Kay Ryan

Failure: the renewable resource. — Kay Ryan

BAIT GOAT
There is a distance where magnets pull, we feel, having held them back. Likewise there is a distance where words attract. Set one out like a bait goat and wait and seven others will approach. But watch out: roving packs can pull your word away. You find your stake yanked and some rough bunch to thank. — Kay Ryan

Tenderness and Rot
Tenderness and rot
share a border.
And rot is an
aggressive neighbor
whose iridescence
keeps creeping over.
No lessons
can be drawn
from this however.
One is not
two countries.
One is not meat
corrupting.
It is important
to stay sweet
and loving. — Kay Ryan

A lot of the job that one has to do as a writer is to protect the thing that doesn't match the world. — Kay Ryan

I have tried to live very quietly, so I could be happy. — Kay Ryan

The satisfactions/of agreement are/immediate as sugar
/a melting of the/granular, a syrup/that lingers, shared/not singular./Many prefer it. — Kay Ryan

In the hills giant oaks
Fall upon their knees
You can touch parts
You have no right to — Kay Ryan

Hide and Seek
It's hard not
to jump out
instead of waiting to be
found. It's
hard to be
alone so long
and then hear
someone come
around. It's
like some form
of skin's developed
in the air
that, rather
than have torn,
you tear. — Kay Ryan

It seems like many people think that if you drive yourself crazy, then you can write. I'm absolutely not interested in that. It made sense to me to be as whole and well as I could be, and as happy. I wanted to see what a fortunate life would produce. What writing would come out of a mind that didn't try to torment itself? What did I have to know? What did I have to do rather than what can I torment and bend myself into doing? What was the fruit on that tree? — Kay Ryan

One can't work/by limelight.//A bowlful/right at/one's elbow//produces no/more than/a baleful/glow against/the kitchen table.//The fruit purveyor's/whole unstable/pyramid//doesn't equal/what daylight did. — Kay Ryan

Action creates/a taste/for itself. — Kay Ryan

The only real access that I have to my mind is when I'm writing. — Kay Ryan

CROWN
Too much rain
loosens trees.
In the hills giant oaks
fall upon their knees.
You can touch parts
you have no right to
places only birds
should fly to. — Kay Ryan

As for reality, I don't even have any interest in that word. — Kay Ryan

The day misspent,
the love misplaced,
has inside it
the seed of redemption.
Nothing is exempt
from resurrection. — Kay Ryan

It's hard not
to jump out
instead of
waiting to be
found. It's
hard to be
alone so long
and then hear
someone come
around. It's
like some form
of skin's developed
in the air
that, rather
than have torn,
you tear.
Hide and Seek — Kay Ryan

Stardust is
the hardest thing
to hold out for.
You must make of yourself
a perfect plane-
something still
upon which
something settles-
something like
sugar grains on
something like
metal, but with
none of the chill.
It's hard to explain.
Stardust — Kay Ryan

The Well or the Cup
How can
you tell
at the start
what you
can give away
and what
you must hold
to your heart.
What is
the well
and what is
a cup. Some
people get
drunk up. — Kay Ryan

Weak Forces

I enjoy an accumulating
faith in weak forces--
a weak faith, of course,
easily shaken, but also
easily regained--in what
starts to drift: all the
slow untrainings of the mind,
the sift left of resolve
sustained too long, the
strange internal shift
by which there's no knowing
if this is the raod taken
or untaken. There are soft
affinities, possibly electrical;
lint-like congeries; moonlit
hints; asymmetrical pink
glowy spots that are no
the defeat of something,
I don't think. — Kay Ryan

Who would have guessed it possible that waiting is sustainable. A place with its own harvest. — Kay Ryan