Winner of “a carriage full of poetry prizes for her funny and philosophical work, including awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and in 1994, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, worth $100,000,” Kay Ryan, 62, will be appointed to succeed Charles Simic as the country’s 16th poet laureate today. (She takes the post in the fall.) NEA chairman Dana Gioia calls her the “thoughtful, bemused, affectionate, deeply skeptical outsider.” Ryan jokes with the Washington Post: “I thought I might take it upon myself to prevent all bad poetry from being published during my reign.” She explains […]