I first saw her poems almost by accident. In 1994 a small publisher gave me a review copy of Flamingo Watching along with several other recent books. No critical fanfare accompanied the slender volume, and I had no special reason to think it possessed singular merit. But given the work of an unfamiliar poet, I always read a few poems, and I was immediately struck by the unusual compression and density of Ryan's work. I particularly enjoyed the evident delight she took in playing extravagant games with small units of language.
Genuine wit is rare in contemporary poetry but rarer still combined with brevity.
I made no immediate fuss about Ryan, but I could also never quite bring myself to put Flamingo Watching away on the shelf. I kept picking the book up to read or reread a few more poems. Over the next year their depth of perception, joyful invention, and stylistic authority never failed to fascinate and delight me. I realize now that I was gradually learning how to read Ryan and listen to the intricate and ingenious conversations her poems have among themselves. Despite all the fashionable blather about individual voices, most poets use and reuse the common parlance of the age with only a slight personal accent.