Lesbian US Poet Laureate Kay Ryan's The Best of It

Capitalizing on her newfound fame as a two-term US poet laureate, Kay Ryan's publisher has just released her greatest hits, The Best of It: New and Selected Poems. Critics frequently compare her work to Marianne Moore's, and sometimes to the poetry of Emily Dickinson, Philip Larkin, or Amy Clampitt. "Melancholy lucidity is Ryan’s greatest gift. But her greatest discovery is that melancholy, with its tendency to brood and spread, is best contained in a form that is tight, witty, almost sprightly sounding," according to Adam Kirsch. He explains, "The title of the book itself does something like this: “the best of it” is simultaneously a boast (“These are my best poems”), a demurral (“This is the best I can do”), and, most powerfully of all, a description of Ryan’s stoic art (poetry is the way she “makes the best of it”)." Kay Ryan and her partner Carol Adair lived together 31 years in northern California, where they were both on the faculty of the College of Marin. Adair died in 2009.