Reviews for The Best of It: New and Selected Poems

The average rating for The Best of It: New and Selected Poems based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-03-04 00:00:00 Kemal Ersin Yilmaz The Best of It collects new and selected poems from sixteenth US Poet Laureate Kay Ryan's career covering 1993-2005. A highly decorated poet, Ryan teaches English at the College of Marin in California (her partner Carol Adair also taught there until her death in 2009) and has released eight collections of poetry. Ryan write tight little poems teeming with figurative language and marching to a rhythmic beat to emphasize her rhyme schemes that marries the traditional poetry styles of old with modern poetry. The Edges of Time It is at the edges that time thins. Time which had been dense and viscous as amber suspending intentions like bees unseizes them. A humming begins, apparently coming from stacks of put-off things or just in back. A racket of claims now, as time flattens. A glittering fan of things competing to happen, brilliant and urgent as fish when seas retreat. Ryan often takes a small, specific idea or moment, and unlocks a quick insight, offering a surprising amount of depth from such a small idea and in such small paper space. While her poems rarely exceed a few short lines, they are filled with poetic devices and charge forward to the rhythmic quality of her words. She fuses her techniques together so well that it is difficult to tell which device was the ultimate goal for the poem, all of them working together in unison to create a brief immaculate image. This rhythm, often iambic, gives the poetry an older feel to it, and allows her to construct interesting rhyme structures. Many of her rhymes are interior rhymes that are brought out and highlighted by the rhythm of her words. Atlas Extreme exertion isolates a person from help, discovered Atlas. Once a certain shoulder-to-burden ratio collapses, there is so little others can do: they can't lend a hand with Brazil and not stand on Peru. I must admit, however, that the rhythm and rhymes of her poetry is my greatest complain with it. It is cute and fun at times, but it is often too much. The rhyming to her poems is like eating a piece of cake with frosting so rich that you cannot take more than a few bites without feeling sick. Much of her poetry is playful and witty, while always retaining an overall seriousness to the poem, yet the playfulness did not charm me the way it does with, say, Billy Collins. I hate to say it, but reading this reminded me of why I love Collins and I felt that Ryan pales in comparison. However, that is not a fair comparison to make, as both poets have radically different styles and goals, but all in all I prefer Collins. There were some very touching poems in here, and several that did grab me. For example, I loved her poem on Hide & Seek, which really reminded me of my 2 year old daughter and her current 'hiding method' of standing in the middle of the room with a blanket over her head yelling 'Where Tilly go?!': Hide & 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. Ryan does take a fun look at poetry as an art form and often uses it as a commentary on other poets. A good quarter of the poems contained in this collection begin with the quote to which they are either inspired by, or in response to. Marianne Moore, Annie Dillard, and Joseph Brodsky are the most common writers spoken to through poetry, and there are several poems based on facts from Ripely's Believe It Or Not!, such as her poem on stage productions or her poem about Matrigupta (Matrigupta wrote a poem that so pleased Rajah Vicraama Ditya that he was given the state of Kashmir for his efforts, which he ruled from 118-123 until abdicating to become a recluse). She even dedicates a poem to W.G. Sebald: He Lit a Fire With Icicles This was the work of St. Sebolt, one of his miracles: he lit a fire with icicles. He struck them like a steel to flint, did St. Sebolt. It makes sense only at a certain body heat. How cold he had to get to learn that ice would burn. How cold he had to stay. When he could feel his feet he had to back away. Her commentary on language, translation and poetry in general are some of the best aspects of this collection. Poetry is a Kind of Money Poetry is a kind of money whose value depends upon reserves. It's not the paper it's written on or its self-announced denomination, but the bullion, sweated from the earth and hidden, which preserves its worth. Nobody knows how this works, and how can it? Why does something stacked in some secret bank or cabinet, some miser's trove, far back, lambent, and gloated over by its golem, make us so solemnly convinced of the transaction when Mandelstam says love, even in translation? As a sort of 'best of', this collection left me a bit underwhelmed. There were some wonderful and touching poems, but much did not particularly grab me. I can see why many people would really enjoy her poetry, and reading a bit about her life reveals an impressive woman with a wonderful mind, but this just fell a bit flat for me. I did enjoy her method of blending the traditional with the modern, and the way her poem often spoke to the title, either allowing the title to be the actual first lines, or to posit and idea that the poem would then look up to the top of the page at and deconstruct. It was the rhyming and overly bouncy rhythm that wore thin on me, which happened in far too many poems. Which may be a point of personal pretention as I don't mind rhyming in older poems, but in these it just felt, well, cheesy and often times forced. It occasionally played out in my head like corny rap lyrics that would be sung over preset Casio beats. This is still a great collection to sample however, and if you enjoy rhyming poetry you might end up adoring Kay Ryan. She is deserving of praise. 3/5 Failure Like slime inside a stagnant tank its green deepening from lime to emerald a dank but less ephemeral efflorescence than success is in general. The Best of It However carved up or pared down we get, we keep on making the best of it as though it doesn't matter that our acre's down to a square foot. As though our garden could be one bean and we'd rejoice if it flourishes, as though one bean could nourish us. Among English Verbs Among English verbs, "to die" is oddest in its eagerness to be "dead", immodest in its haste to be told- a verb alchemical in the head: one speck of its gold and a whole life's lead. Green Hills Their green flanks and swells are not flesh in any sense matching ours, we tell ourselves. Nor their green breast nor their green shoulder nor the languor of their rolling over.

Review # 2 was written on 2014-06-27 00:00:00 John Hancock A life should leave deep tracks: ruts where she went out and back to get the mail or move the hose around the yard; where she used to stand before the sink, a worn-out place; beneath her hand the china knobs rubbed down to white pastilles; the switch she used to feel for in the dark almost erased. Her things should keep her marks. The passage of a life should show; it should abrade. And when life stops, a certain space' however small' should be left scarred by the grand and damaging parade. Things shouldn't be so hard.