Hello Friends —
Kay Ryan was awarded the Pultizer Prize this week for her collected poems, spanning 45 years of published work. So we're going to do one of her poems today.
Earlier this week, I was reminded of how so many people who are taught the Williams Carlos Williams poem "The Red Wheelbarrow" end up remembering "so much depends upon a red wheel barrow" but may forget about the "glazed with rain water" and "beside the white
chickens." Although I had not connected them before, reading Kay Ryan's "Home to Roost" again this week after thinking about the forgotten chickens of "The Red Wheelbarrow," I will probably always associate these two barnyard scene poems with each other in my mind from now on —
Cheers,
Ellen
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Home to Roost
The chickens
are circling and
blotting out the
day. The sun is
bright, but the
chickens are in
the way. Yes,
the sky is dark
with chickens,
dense with them.
They turn and
then they turn
again. These
are the chickens
you let loose
one at a time
and small—
various breeds.
Now they have
come home
to roost—all
the same kind
at the same speed.
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P.S. When Kay Ryan became the United States poet laureate for the 2008-2010
term, the Bay Area photographer Lisa Wiseman (who, full disclosure, is
also my oldest childhood friend) took a gorgeous, very poetic potrait
series that added a whole nother dimension to the Newsweek profile article "The Reluctant Poet Laureate," which you can view here.
Labels: NPM