A review by dmturner
Erratic Facts by Kay Ryan

dark emotional funny reflective sad slow-paced

5.0

I put "Eggs" (p. 59) on the cards we handed out at the memorial picnic for my husband in 2022, but almost all the poems are about grief. Profound miniatures without an extra word, whittled into tiny  perfect statues from a vast piece of wood, Ryan's poems are always brilliant. In this collection, a different poem strikes me each time as I progress in my own idiosyncratic grief.

Struck Tree

You could start
to think a struck
tree's new leaves
from up in the 
good part would
turn out halves,
but you have to 
laugh at yourself; 
loss doesn't get
into the subsets
of absolutely 
everything.
 (p. 62)