Vroeër vandeesweek is vanjaar se Pulitzer-pryswenners bekend gemaak en volgens die New York Times se berig word die Pulitzer vir poësie aan Kay Ryan, voormalige poet laureate, toegeken vir haar versamelbundel The Best of It: New and Selected Poems: “Ms. Ryan’s poems are as slim as runway models, so tiny you could almost tweet them. Their compact refinement, though, does not suggest ease or chic. Her voice is quizzical and impertinent, funny in uncomfortable ways, scuffed by failure and loss,” aldus NYT se beriggewer.
Alhoewel erkenning vir haar werk redelik laat in haar loopbaan gekom het, het pryse in die onlangse verlede met aanhoudende eentonige reëlmaat op haar toegesak. Hieronder tel pryse en toekennings deur die Guggenheim Foundation, die National Endowment for the Arts, ‘n Ingram Merrill Award, die Union League Poetry Prize, ‘n Maurice English Poetry Award, drie Pushcart- pryse en in 2004 die Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, wat $100 000 werd is. Haar gedigte verskyn gereeld in gesogte publikasies soos The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly en The New York Review of Books.
Van haar digkuns het JD McClatchy die volgende gesê: “”Her poems are compact, exhilarating, strange affairs, like Erik Satie miniatures or Joseph Cornell boxes. She is an anomaly in today’s literary culture: as intense and elliptical as Dickinson, as buoyant and rueful as Frost.”
Vir jou leesplesier plaas ek Kay Ryan se gedig “Patience” onder aan hierdie Nuuswekker.
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Graag fokus ek vanoggend jou aandag op drie nuwe verse van Hans Pienaar wat in sy gedigtekamer geplaas is; van Daniel Hugo is vertalings van twee gedigte deur R.S. Thomas ontvang en van Zandra Bezuidenhout haar resensie van Uit die wit lig van my land gesny, die huldigingsbundel van T.T. Cloete aan sy oorlede vrou, Anna, wat deur Pooka Uitgewers uitgegee is.
Lekker lees aan dit alles.
LE
Patience
Patience is
wider than one
once envisioned,
with ribbons
of rivers
and distant
ranges and
tasks undertaken
and finished
with modest
relish by
natives in their
native dress.
Who would
have guessed
it possible
that waiting
is sustainable-
a place with
its own harvests.
Or that in
time's fullness
the diamonds
of patience
couldn't be
distinguished
from the genuine
in brilliance
or hardness
© Kay Ryan