Billy Collins & Kay Ryan

Billy Collins is an American phenomenon. No poet since Robert Frost has managed to combine high critical acclaim with such broad popular appeal.

Kay Ryan is a Marin County native and the 2008-09 Poet Laureate. She is known for her sly, compact poems that revel in wordplay and internal rhymes. Her funny and philosophical work has earned a carriage full of poetry prizes, including awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize.