Five Days with Kay Ryan: Day 1- Blandeur
Kay Ryan is kind of a black and white figure in poetry. You either love her wit and little geodes of poems, or you hate her for the silliness and almost childishness of her poems. Or something like that. To be honest, I think I was born into the first category, so I can’t exactly say what people don’t like about her for sure. I know that I’ve heard from professors and students alike that they don’t get the appeal. Thus begins this 20-day excursion into Kay Ryan’s work. The poem “Blandeur” originally appeared in The New Yorker (so perhaps jealousy is a factor in not liking Ryan’s work) and then her book Say Uncle.
Blandeur
If it please God,
let less happen.
Even out Earth’s
rondure, flatten
Eiger, blanden
the Grand Canyon.
Make valleys
slightly higher,
widen fissures
to arable land,
remand your
terrible glaciers
and silence
their calving,
halving or doubling
all geographical features
toward the mean.
Unlean against our hearts.
Withdraw your grandeur
from these parts.
—
What I love about this poem isn’t necessarily the witty title (as opposed to grandeur) or the witty little rhymes, or the mention of a greater entity which might be pleased by little ol’ us, but the extended metaphor of the yin and yang. Everyone complains about the bad things that happen, but without the negative a positive isn’t really possible, only a sense of sameness, of blandeur. This is probably Ryan’s most anthologized poems.