Poems that turn ordinary things grand

Though she calls herself "a proud mono-tasker," Kay Ryan was making toast for her nephew while fielding calls about her appointment as 16th poet laureate of the United States.From now on, the 62-year-old poet and English teacher from Fairfax, Calif., will have to get used to the pace."I usually do a lot of idle woolgathering, punctuated with bicycle riding and a certain amount of cooking," she said, holding the phone to her ear Thursday while buttering toast. "This will flip daily life upside down."Wit and understatement -- applied to the quiddities of daily living -- are key to Ryan's poetry, which has earned many honors, including, in 2004, the nation's largest poetry award, the $100,000 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize."Kay Ryan is a distinctive and original voice within the rich variety of contemporary poetry," said Librarian of Congress James Billington, who selected Ryan for the one- to two-year post, replacing poet Charles Simic.Ryan learned about the honor Monday, when she and her partner of 30 years, Carol Adair, arrived home from the Aspen Ideas Festival to find a phone message from Billington."I thought, 'Oh my God, this can mean only one thing,' " Ryan said, "and the blood ran out of my head."The next day was a busy one, because she and Adair were scheduled to be remarried, having married the first time in 2004 at City Hall in San Francisco. "We'll have to get the rings re-engraved with the new date," she said.In her new position, Ryan's first duty will be to open the Library of Congress' annual literary series Oct. 16 with a reading of her work.She joins a distinguished roster of poets laureate, including Robert Frost, Louise Bogan, William Carlos Williams, Robert Lowell and, more recently, Gwendolyn Brooks, Maxine Kumin, Robert Pinsky and Billy Collins.Some have used the government perch to launch pet projects, such as Rita Dove's effort to explore the African diaspora through the eyes of its artists and Robert Hass' "Watershed" conference devoted to writing, nature and community."Kay's appointment is a sign of the esteem in which her work is held," said poet Dana Gioia, director of the National Endowment for the Arts in Washington.Her most recent book and sixth collection of poetry, "The Niagara River," published in 2006 by Grove Press, was lauded by critics."In Ryan's poetry, plain things, like doorknobs or Chinese acupuncture charts, claim to be no big deal," a San Francisco Chronicle critic wrote. "But the seemingly small subject will quickly and surprisingly open onto something grander."Ryan was born in 1945 in San Jose, Calif. She went to UCLA, earning bachelor's and master's degrees. She became a poet somewhat reluctantly."I wanted to do something that involved a pickup truck and a tool belt," she said.Besides, she found poetic affectations off-putting. "I don't like the cloak, the posturing, the self-concern," she said, with a laugh."But when I was 30, I realized I wasn't going to avoid being this poet thing," she said.Her epiphany came during a cross-country bicycle journey. Since then, for more than 30 years, she has focused on writing poetry while teaching remedial English part time at the College of Marin in Kentfield, Calif."Kay is a wonderful teacher, and teaching remedial English has made her pay attention to the essence of words," said Joan Bingham, executive editor of Grove Press.Bingham launched the Grove Poetry Series in 1996 with Ryan's collection, "Elephant Rocks," in 1996. They will publish her next book, "New and Selected Poems," in November.Ryan's work has appeared in four editions of "The Best American Poetry" and in three Pushcart Prizes anthologies. She has also received a 2004 Guggenheim Fellowship, an Ingram Merrill Award, a 2001 fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the 2000 Union League Poetry Prize and the Maurice English Poetry Award."Kay Ryan doesn't write like anyone else," Gioia said. "The poet she most reminds me of is Emily Dickinson. Both write very short, witty, dense and wise poems."One of Ryan's poems -- "How Birds Sing" -- is permanently installed at the Central Park Zoo in New York City. "It's on top of a little retaining wall that children run up and down on," she said.While Ryan has yet to decide what pet project to take on as poet laureate, she has definite ideas about what poetry should do."Poetry should leave you feeling freer and not more burdened," she said. "I like to think of all good poetry as providing more oxygen in the atmosphere. Poems just make it easier to breathe."(E-mail Heidi Benson at hbenson(at)sfchronicle.com.)(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)