with ribbons
of rivers
and distant
ranges and
tasks undertaken
and finished
with modest
relish by
natives in their
native dress.
Who would
have guessed
it possible
that waiting
is sustainable—
a place with
its own harvests.
Or that in
time's fullness
the diamonds
of patience
couldn't be
distinguished
from the genuine
in brilliance
or hardness.

~ Kay Ryan

California native Kay Ryan has been the recipient of countless poetry awards and fellowships throughout her impressive career, and in 2008 served as the Library of Congress's sixteenth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry. 

The poet J. D. McClatchy once said of Ryan’s work, “Her poems are compact, exhilarating, strange affairs, like Erik Satie miniatures or Joseph Cornell boxes. She is an anomaly in today's literary culture: as intense and elliptical as Dickinson, as buoyant and rueful as Frost.” 

Ryan was selected four times for The Best American Poetry and was also included in The Best of the Best American Poetry 1988-1997.  In 2006, she was elected Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets.

Those visiting New York’s Central Park Zoo will find one of her poems permanently installed there.