Kay Ryan

Kay Ryan (1945- ) was born in California and grew up in the small towns of the San Joaquin Valley and the Mojave Desert. She received both a bachelor's and master's degree from UCLA. One of her poems has been permanently installed at New York’s Central Park Zoo. Ryan was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2006. In 2008, Ryan was appointed the Library of Congress's sixteenth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry. Kay has received numerous awards (the Pulitzer Prize in 2011) and has published several volumes of poetry.

Spiderweb

From other

angles the

fibers look

fragile, but

not from the

spider’s, always

hauling coarse

ropes, hitching

lines to the

best posts

possible. It’s

heavy work

everyplace,

fighting sag,

winching up

give. It

isn’t ever

delicate

to live.

— Kay Ryan