Today I heard Kay Ryan read "The Edges of Time" and discuss poetry in general, and I'm back to being an acolyte. Ryan mentioned Emily Dickinson as one of her heroes (first Hopkins, she said--for exposing new ways to stretch language -- then Donne and Dickinson). Like Ryan, E.D. explores the far corners of the mind, with ususual curiosity and apparent accuracy, catching this or that shading or oddness in a psyche or a mental process. Those adventures within and about the human mind plus the shared penchant for precise, sharp language are the two most prominent features that Ryan and E.D. share.
Well, there is also their brevity. In an age when poets (as well as fiction writers) feel free to go on and on, Ryan and Dickinson seem to feel an honorable obligation to density, richness, and power of language--finding the word that is just right--precise, interesting, original, quirky, the word that throws a genuinely new, legitimate, and important light (or darkness) on a subject.
Feel free to look at the other two poems, of course, ("Home to Roost" has appeared here before); however "The Edges of Time" is my primary interest today.
Excerpt: 'The Best Of It' : NPR
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