INTERVIEWER
Do you feel that part of the laureate job is to convince the reading public that poetry is useful?
RYAN
It’s poetry’s uselessness that excites me. Its hopelessness. All this talk of usefulness makes me feel I’ve suddenly been shanghaied into the helping professions. Prose is practical language. Conversation is practical language. Let them handle the usefulness jobs. But of course, poetry has its balms. It makes us less lonely by one. It makes us have more room inside ourselves. But it’s paralyzing to think of usefulness and poetry in the same breath.
”- Kay Ryan interviewed by Sarah Fry in The Art of Poetry No. 94, Kay Ryan
from Stowe Boyd http://www.stoweboyd.com/post/146063767622
