{"id":1926,"date":"2008-07-18T09:10:00","date_gmt":"2008-07-18T09:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/?p=1926"},"modified":"2018-11-20T05:29:26","modified_gmt":"2018-11-20T05:29:26","slug":"poetry-friday-okay-kay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/?p=1926","title":{"rendered":"Poetry Friday: Okay, Kay!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Whew! Friday.
And tons of good news.
First, Kay Ryan has been named US poet laureate. Yay for Northern California, Marin County, hermits and mountain bikers. According to The Guardian<\/a> yesterday, “Upon hearing that the Library of Congress had called, she thought to herself, ‘I can’t have that many overdue books.'” Hah! In a 2004 interview<\/a>, Ryan described writing as a self-imposed emergency,” the artistic equivalent of finding a loved one pinned under a 3,000-pound car. This emergency allows her to tap into a self which she would not otherwise find.<\/p>\n

Wow.
My second bit of good news is that I am nine and nine-tenths through with another manuscript, which is A Good Thing. Copy editing will take place before August, huzzah. Finally, finally some good progress. Thanks to those who shoved me off of the starting line and cheered. <\/p>\n

I received a letter this week from a former student who has just finished a first draft of a novel — and said that she wishes she knew exactly what to do next to be sure it would be published.<\/p>\n

I wish I could tell her “exactly” what to do as well, but there’s nothing exact in writing. It’s a Herculean task at times, horrible and wonderful and indefinable. No one can step in and help, not really. At some stages, it’s up to you…<\/p>\n

And this succinct and thoughtful poem by the inestimable Kay Ryan fits right in as well:<\/p>\n



<\/a>Atlas<\/b><\/p>\n

Extreme exertion
isolates a person
from help,
discovered Atlas.
Once a certain
shoulder-to-burden
ratio collapses,
there is so little
others can do:<\/p>\n

… read the rest of this concise and meaningful poem here<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n

More of our poet laureate’s goodies can be found here.<\/a><\/p>\n

Poetry Friday is being ably hosted at Writing and Ruminating<\/a> with poetess and princess Kelly Fineman. Don’t miss her celebration of Kay Ryan, and Eisha’s too<\/a>. None of us have posted the same Ryan poem, imagine that!<\/p>\n

A little SF\/F news, via SFSignal<\/a>: Our beloved British hottie, Patrick Stewart<\/a> on baldness. Who knew — Tor does podcasts! Check out their interview with David Lubar<\/a> (THE CURSE OF THE CAMPFIRE WEENIES), and F. Paul Wilson. Both guys have new YA stuff out. Also plenty of John Scalzi (THE LAST COLONY), too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Whew! Friday.And tons of good news. First, Kay Ryan has been named US poet laureate. Yay for Northern California, Marin County, hermits and mountain…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[93,10],"class_list":["post-1926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-poetry-friday","tag-views"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1926"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1926\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5013,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1926\/revisions\/5013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}