So we have a new overlord. Who is outsider-y. (August Kleinzahler sneering at the New York literary establishment across the river springs to mind.)Ladies and gentlemen, introducing Kay Ryan, who apparently often finds loved ones pinned under cars, and who is so refined, disciplined, and original that she must inevitably be self-taught. (If I listen hard, I can hear thousands of creative writing teachers wincing together, knowing that their job just got a lot harder.)
John Gallaher has a fairly even-handed summary of the argument for and against here. I confess that I thought she was a Victorian writer before today (never having read her and barely having registered the changing of the guard). Clearly, I am less than a reliable source.
How do we feel about accessibility and apparent modesty? As to her feelings about the great textual watering hole of AWP... well, Simone Weil would have starved herself to death before she would have gone to AWP.
By the way, I specifically used the overlord metaphor in the first sentence so I could gratuitously throw in a link to the Zombie Threat Level. Just a little lagniappe for ya.
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