New Poet Laureate Named: Kay Ryan

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Library of Congress Announcement

Death by Fruit Kay Ryan Only the crudest of the vanitas set ever thought you had to get a skull into the picture whether you needed its tallowy color near the grapes or not. Others, stopping to consider shapes and textures, often discovered that eggs or aubergines went better, or leeks, or a plate of string beans. A skull is so dominant. It takes so much bunched up drapery, such a ponderous display of ornate cutlery, just to make it less prominent. The greatest masters preferred the subtlest vanitas, modestly trusting to fruit baskets to whisper ashes to ashes, relying on the poignant exactness of oranges to release like a citrus mist the always fresh fact of how hard we resist how briefly we’re pleased.
1 August 2000 ©2003 Partisan Review Inc.