Kay Ryan Quotes

It isn't ever delicate to live.

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

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

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

Action creates/a taste/for itself.

Not even waste/is inviolate./The day misspent,/the love misplaced,/has inside it/the seed of redemption./Nothing is exempt from resurrection.

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

Failure: the renewable resource.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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?

Beyond the table, there is an altar, with candles lit for Billie Holiday and Willa Carter and Hypatia and Patsy Cline. Next to it, an old podium that once held a Bible, on which we have repurposed an old chemistry handbook as the Book of Lilith. In its pages is our own liturgical calendar: Saint Clementine and All Wayfarers; Saints Lorena Hickok and Eleanor Roosevelt, observed in the summer with blueberries to symbolize the sapphire ring; the Vigil of Saint Juliette, complete with mints and dark chocolate; Feast of the Poets, during which Mary Oliver is recited over beds of lettuce, Kay Ryan over a dish of vinegar and oil, Audre Lorde over cucumbers, Elizabeth Bishop over some carrots; The Exaltation of Patricia Highsmith, celebrated with escargots boiling in butter and garlic and cliffhangers recited by an autumn fire; the Ascension of Frida Khalo with self-portraits and costumes; the Presentation of Shirley Jackson, a winter holiday started at dawn and ended at dusk with a gambling game played with lost milk teeth and stones. Some of them with their own books; the major and minor arcana of our little religion.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

WINTER FEAR Is it just winter or is this worse. Is this the year when outer damp obscures a deeper curse that spring can’t fix, when gears that turn the earth won’t shift the view, when clouds won’t lift though all the skies go blue.

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.

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.

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

A certain kind of Eden holds us thrall.

To do it all we must do it too soon: shoot before the moon to shoot the moon, we learn, having shot it dead, bagged now and heavy as a head.

[P]oetry makes nothing happen. That's the relief of it. And the reason why nothing can substitute for it.

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.

One need not smoke to inhale. The air in bars holds its load of tars in stale suspension. Also jails. Jails are a prison for the person who abhors smoke. But happily gorgeous thought also hangs around like that: you can walk through a mist of Brodsky and contact- exist.

All Shall Be Restored The grains shall be collected From the thousand shores To which they found their way, And the boulder restored, And the boulder itself replaced In the cliff, and likewise The cliff shall rise Or subside until the plate of earth Is without fissure. Restoration Knows no half-measure. It will Not stop when the treasure and lost Bronze horse remounts the steps. Even this horse will founder backward To coin, cannon, and domestic pots, Which themselves shall bubble and Drain back to green veins in stone. And every word written shall lift off Letter by letter, the backward text Read ever briefer, ever more antic In its effort to insist that nothing Shall be lost.

Why Isn't It All More Marked? Why isn’t it all more marked, why isn’t every wall graffitied, every park tree stripped like the stark limbs in the house of the chimpanzees? Why is there bark Left? Why do people Cling to their Shortening shrifts? So Silent. Not why people are; Why not more violent? We must be So absorbent. We must be Almost crystals Almost all some Neutralizing chemical That really does Clarify and bring peace, Take black sorrow and make surcease

Okay. Oh-kay. Re-cap. He just had a man come in his mouth. He liked it. He may be embarking on anal sex, soon, if he was reading the subtext right. Options: stay or leave. Pros of staying: first experience with anal sex. Cons of staying: first experience with anal sex. No, no. That isn't right. Pros of staying: first experience with anal sex. Cons of staying: not being able to face Pete the next day. Maybe ever. The thing about sex, though, as Ryan is discovering, is that it's a goddamn persuasive motivator. It fucks with people's minds.

Mary Kay Andrews, Sunset Beach (St. Martin’s, 5/7)

The seven official founders were as follows: •  Michael Cusack from Carron, County Clare, a teacher •  Maurice Davin from Carrick-on-Suir, County Tipperary, a farmer •  John Wyse Power, a journalist, editor of the Leinster Leader and an ‘associate of the extreme section of Irish Nationalism’ •  James K. Bracken, a building contractor and a monumental mason from Templemore, County Tipperary, who was a prominent member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood •  Joseph P. O’Ryan, who was born in Carrick-on-Suir and practised as a solicitor in Callan and Thurles •  John McKay, a Belfast man then working as a journalist with the Cork Examiner •  District Inspector St George McCarthy, who was born in Bansha, County Tipperary and who was a member of the Royal Irish Constabulary stationed at Templemore THE UNOFFICIAL LIST As well as the official founders a number of other people are reputed to have been present at the meeting. They include Frank Moloney from Nenagh, William Foley from Carrick-on-Suir and Thurles residents T.K. Dwyer, Charles Culhane, William Delahunty, John Butler and Michael Cantwell. There is a strong Kilkenny tradition that Henry Joseph Meagher, father of the famous Lory, Jack Hoyne, who played on Kilkenny’s first All-Ireland winning side in 1904, and a third Tullaroan man, Ned Teehan, also attended the foundation meeting

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

How Birds Sing One is not taxed; one need not practice; one simply tips the throat back over the spine axis and asserts the chest. The wings and the rest compress a musical squeeze which floats a series of notes upon the breeze.

HEAVENS NEED FURNACES Heavens need furnaces, The factories where dross converts to light gasses. The sloughed skins of dreams are instant fuel, remarkably full of oil like creosote bushes. Your worst losses warm angels; despair puts a glint on God’s hair. And the nicest surprise is the substance that rises when you know you can’t get there from here.

The Niagara River by Kay Ryan As though the river were a floor, we position our table and chairs upon it, eat, and have conversation. As it moves along, we notice — as calmly as though dining room paintings were being replaced — the changing scenes along the shore. We do know, we do know this is the Niagara River, but it is hard to remember what that means

All I trust is whistling in the dark. from section 3 of “Radiantly Indefensible,” The American Poetry Review (vol. 49, no. 3, May/June 2020)

Lightning, but not bright. Thunder, but not loud. Sometimes something in the sky connects to something in the ground in ways we don’t expect and more or less miss except through reverse drama: things were heightened and now they’re calmer. -- Reverse Drama

Rubbing Lamps Things besides Aladdin’s and the golden cave fish’s lamps grant wishes. In fact, most lamps aren’t lamp- shaped and happen by accident: an ordinary knob goes lambent as you twist or a cloth turns to silver mesh against a dish- something so odd and filled with promise for a minute that you spend your only wish wishing someone else could see it.

Witness Never trust a witness. By the time a thing is Noticed, it has happened. Some magician’s redirected Our attention to the rabbit. The best life is suspected, Not examined. And never trust reverse. The mourners of the dead Count backward from the date Of the event, rehearsing Its approach, investing Final words with greatest weight, As though weight ever Carried what we meant: As though he could have Told us where he went.

Lacunae Lacunae aren’t What was going to be Empty anyway. They aren’t spaces With uses, such As margins or highway edges. Lacunae are losses In the middle of places- Drops where something Documented happened But the document is Gone-pond shaped Or jagged.

Losses Most losses add something- A new socket or silence, A gap in a personal Archipelago of islands. We have that difference To visit- itself A going-on of sorts. But there are other losses So far beyond report That they leave holes In holes only Like the ends of the Long and lonely lives Of castaways Thought dead but not.

the ‘protective’ part seriously, ’kay?” John

Like boulders rolled away from doors, like meteors, things rumbling in my brain ask me to go out like Moses into some wilderness.