Poet Laureate

I have just discovered our poet laureate Kay Ryan. I guess I'd been a bit behind the times and too focused on things other than poetry for too long now! She's going to be speaking at MJC Saturday, so I took a quick look at her work and found that even after just a quick look I like it. That's unusual, but when it happens it generally turns out that those poets end up being favorites of mine. That's how it was for me and e. e. cummings and Howard Nemerov. One of my favorite things is to discover a new (to me) poet whose work I enjoy, and it's been a long time since that happened.

PERIPHERY

Founatins, for instance,
have a periphery
at some distance
from the spray.
On nice days
idle people circle
all the way around
the central spout.
They do not get wet.
They do not get hot.