Say Uncle

A poetry collection that marries wit and wisdom more brilliantly than any I know by the Pulitzer Prize-winning former US Poet Laureate (Jane Hirshfield, author of Come, Thief). Filled with wry logic and a magical, unpredictable musicality, Kay Ryan's poems continue to generate excitement with their frequent appearances in The New Yorker and other leading periodicals. Say Uncle, Ryan's fifth collection, is filled with the same hidden connections, the same slyness and almost gleeful detachment that has delighted readers of her earlier books. Compact, searching, and oddly beautiful, these poems, in the words of internationally acclaimed poet and writer Dana Gioia, take the shape of an idea clarifying itself. The first thing you notice about her poems is an elbow-to-the-ribs playfulness. -San Francisco Chronicle The short lines and quick images-almost snapshots-are elemental. Ryan puts them together, then pulls them apart, and twists them in playful fashion, as though she were an alchemist with a modern experimental attitude . . . Truly short-line, one-stanza (for the most part) wonders: full-brained poems in a largely half-brained world. -Kirkus Reviews Witty, charming, serious and delightful . . . her tight structures, odd rhymes and ethical judgments place her more firmly in the tradition of Marianne Moore and, latterly, Amy Clampitt. Those poets, though, wrote many kinds of poems: Ryan, in this volume, writes just one kind. It is, however, a kind worth looking out for-well crafted, understated, funny and smart. -Publishers Weekly