“Bad Day” by Kay Ryan
Poetry 180: A Poem a Day for American High Schools, Hosted by Billy Collins, U.S. Poet Laureate, 2001-2003
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Bad Day
Not every day is a good day for the elfin tailor. Some days the stolen cloth reveals what it was made for: a handsome weskit or the jerkin of an elfin sailor. Other days the tailor sees a jacket in his mind and sets about to find the fabric. But some days neither the idea nor the material presents itself; and these are the hard days for the tailor elf.
—Kay Ryan
From Say Uncle, 2000
Grove/Atlantic, Inc
Copyright 2000 Kay Ryan.
All rights reserved.
Reprinted by permission of Grove/Atlantic, Inc. Copyright 2000 by Kay Ryan. For further permissions information, contact Mary Flower, Grove/Atlantic Inc., 841 Broadway, New York, NY 10003, [email protected].

About the Poet
Kay Ryan (1945- ) served as the U.S Poet Laureate from 2008 to 2012. She is the author of eight poetry collections, including The Best of it: New and Selected Poems (Grove Press, 2010), which won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.
Learn more about Kay Ryan at The Poetry Foundation.