Kay Ryan

The Best of It: new and selected poems by Kay Ryan.  Ryan is currently in her second year as Poet Laureate of the United States.  Born and raised in Southern California, she was educated at UCLA and she now teaches part-time at the College of Marin in Kentfield.  This is her first retrospective collection of poetry, and she includes previously published work as well as new pieces.  Her poems are very short and compressed, but there is a certain rhythm and rhyme to her poems that give them an air of musicality....almost like a chant. 
In addition to her two-year tenure as Poet Laureate, Ryan has also been awarded the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Maurice English Poetry Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Union League Poetry Prize, an Ingram Merrill Award, and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.