ENTERTAINMENT

NEW YORK – Kay Ryan – award-winning poet, mountain-bike rider and self-described "modern hermit" – will soon be going to Washington.

The Library of Congress announced that the lifelong Californian, whose compressed, metaphysical poetry has been compared to Emily Dickinson's, will become the 16th U.S. poet laureate, succeeding Charles Simic. The appointment, which starts in the fall, lasts for one year and comes with a $35,000 salary, plus $5,000 for travel and a "splendid office," according to Librarian of Congress James H. Billington.

"In a society full of rhetorical overstatement and a kind of zigging in and out of all kinds of pontifical disguises, she's got this marvelous, understated depth," Mr. Billington said.

Ms. Ryan, 62, lives in Fairfax, Calif., with her longtime partner, Carol Adair. She told The Associated Press that she was "delighted and surprised" to receive the job.

Upon hearing that the Library of Congress had called, she said, she thought to herself, "I can't have that many overdue books." But she was also "hip enough to the world of possible glories for the poet" to know who chooses the laureate.

Her books include Elephant Rocks, Say Uncle and, most recently, The Niagara River, which was released by Grove Press in 2005.

Her poems are brief, reflective, profoundly and humorously aware of both the limitless cosmos and our limited lives, as illustrated in "The Best of It," in which she writes, "However carved up/Or pared down we get/We keep on making/The best of it."

The Associated Press