Kay Ryan, the former U.S. Poet Laureate, will add to her list of honors when she receives the National Humanities Medal this afternoon. The ceremony, in which President Obama will present National Medal of Arts and National Humanities Medal to twenty-four recipients, will be streamed live at 2:00 on the White House’s website.
Ryan’s accolades include a 2001 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a 2004 Guggenheim Fellowship, the 2004 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, a 2011 MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant, and the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for poetry. According to the official White House press release, Ryan was selected “for her contributions as a poet and educator. A former Poet Laureate of the United States, her witty and compact verse infused with subtle wordplay, reminds us of the power of language to evoke wisdom from the ordinary.”
The New Criterion is proud to have published Kay Ryan’s work in the past, which can be read from her author page or by clicking on the links below:
The well or the cup
Thieves
The Material
Shipwreck
All poems were published in the April 2004 issue of The New Criterion.