Although Kay Ryan will not receive her laurel wreath and keys to the poets' washroom at the Library of Congress until September, scholars are already hard at work searching for clues about what the Ryan Era might mean for poetry and writing in general in the United States.
Professor Andrzej Rentap of East of Kishinev University, a longtime student of ephemera, today brought to our attention the following review of the Krups FEP4B 4-Slice Toaster (Black) by Ryan, writing under her legal name of "Kay P. Ryan." Professor Rentap believes that this brief essay first appeared in an English language Brazilian publication with which he was not previously familiar, "amazon.com."
We agree with Professor Rentap that this discovery, "best toaster I ever had," demonstrates the same lightness, clarity, curiosity, and openness in Kay Ryan's prose that we find in her poetry and hope that its publication here will bring this side of Ryan to a wider public.
best toaster I ever had,
January 3, 2007
The toaster is very well designed. It accomodates an unusually wide range of bread shapes and thicknesses, toasts excellently, and has a toast-elevator feature that gets little pieces up to where you can get them out without burning yourself. I've never seen that before and it's really handy. The toast-elevator also allows the finished toast to wait for you down deeper in the toaster, so it doesn't cool off so fast. The removable metal top surface is handy for warming up things; I always looked for metal toasters so that I could do this, but Krups had the good sense to add the feature to a plastic toaster. The only change I'd make would be to move the "stop" button out from under the lever; it's hard to see, though no problem once you figure it out. I have never written a product review before, but I feel obliged to pass on the good news to others frustrated by shoddy toasters.
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