Customer Reviews

Elephant Rocks: Poems (Grove Press Poetry Series)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I loved this book. Kay Ryan's poems are very short, but they pack so much ambiguous meaning in a few lines. They're quite unusual among contemporary poetry: epigrammatic, terse, very accessible, almost light verse, but with shadows flickering all around. I give this book to friends who say they "don't get modern poetry" and that modern poetry makes them feel stupid. If you like Stevie Smith or the short verses of Robert Frost, you'll love Elephant Rocks. Here's a short one, called "Silence":

Silence is not snow./ It cannot grow/ deeper. A thousand years/ of it are thinner/ than paper. so/ we must have it/ all wrong/ when we feel trapped/ like mastodons.

Once every couple of generations, an original thinker manages to refresh an art form that had seemed exhausted. Kay Ryan has done this with poetry. Her poems rhyme--but not in the ways and places you expect. They're metrical--but only according to the author's own quirky standard. They're short, tight, and disciplined--and yet they allow language to sprawl and luxuriate. Best of all, they're musical. Not a single one of them bounces along in a stanzaic quatrain the way a traditional lyric would; instead, these poems are densely packed, with beautiful interior rhymes and echoes chiming away in a miniature space.

One final paradox: Although these poems are not confessional (they do not contain personal remembrances, hurts, or hopes), they gradually reveal an intensely individual mind--a lucid, generous, and humorous one.

In my opinion Kay is the best, most beautiful poet working in the English language today. She has quietly reinvented rhyming poetry according to her own peculiar--but very logical--rules. I consider her best poems to be miraculous.

In admiration,

Henry Rathvon

I had to stop reading this book on the bus because it caused me to blubber like a baby! Ms. Ryan's words pour into your soul like water, filling you up and spilling over your face. Seldom does a writer have such a command over both sound and sense--that's what makes her a true poet. And, like the best poetrty, this book should be enjoyed in a quiet, intimate environment, read aloud to the one you love best. An absolutely wonderful book.

The language is direct, the imagery strong. Further, unlike too much of modern verse, it doesn't pomp itself with convolution or obscurity. Each piece warrants a second and third reading, each time revealing a bit more of the mind that enscribed it. Highly recommended.

While I must reserve my 5-star rating(s) for Walt Whitman and a few others, Kay Ryan definitely has what it takes to put dog-eared volumes of poetry back into the pockets of readers in the U.S. Yes, they're rather short, but then so are most haiku, right? Maybe she has invented the "long haiku" form. If you're on a budget, you might wanna' borrow her work from the library until the new volume of selected pieces comes out. Whatever, read Kay Ryan and let others know you do...

I know Kay Ryan is the next big thing in poetry, but I found her poetry to be lacking in substance. Her style I loved. I found it to be fresh and invigorating, it is more that the poems didn't seem to contain anything within them. Oh there were a few gems here and there (I especially liked "Wooden"), but not for the length of the collection.