Good poets have good imaginations, like Kay Ryan, the 62-year-old Californian who was named poet laureate consultant to the Library of Congress last week.

She has positioned herself as an "outsider" in America's poetry scene, and the image has stuck. Reports of her appointment last week described her as out of the mainstream.

Her fellow Californian and leading booster, Dana Gioia, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, compared her to the once-unknown recluse Emily Dickinson in his essay collection, "Disappearing Ink."

In truth, Ryan's as much a part of the Establishment as her 15 predecessors in the honorary position. She published her first collection in 1983. What she lacks is a literary position in a university, teaching remedial English part time at a California college.

"What's interesting about Kay Ryan is that she's seen as the first poet laureate who is ostensibly not part of the usual literary scene," said poet Lynn Emanuel, "but if you look at her bio, she's held the traditional appointments. Ryan is really part of that upper-level 'po-biz' world.

"I don't see her as an outsider. In many ways, she's become a standard figure . . .," concluded Emanuel, English professor at the University of Pittsburgh.

Included on Ryan's resume are a chancellor's position at the Academy of American Poets; the $100,000 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize in 2004 from the Poetry Foundation, which has published many of her poems in its literary review; four Pushcart Prizes for poetry; four appearances in the "Best American Poetry" anthology; and a schedule of readings around the country.

Ryan also has published six poetry collections. Her latest was "The Niagara River" in 2005. Grove Press said last week it will release "New and Selected Poems" by Ryan later this year.

New York City's Central Park Zoo has installed a copy of her poem "How Birds Sing" in a playground.

Reviews of her work are uniformly positive. Frank Wilson, the retired book editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer, said it was "love at first sight" for him after reading Ryan. He introduced the poet at the West Chester University Poetry Conference last year.

"Much of the pleasure that comes from reading Kay Ryan involves just looking at the poem on the page and seeing how well put together it is, how sound and sense aren't simply joined, but fused."

However, Pittsburgh-based poets Robert Gibb, Jim Daniels (Carnegie Mellon University) and Sheryl St. Germain (Chatham University) said they were unfamiliar with Ryan's work.

"This is the first time in a very long time I've not recognized the name of a poet laureate," St. Germain wrote in an e-mail, "but since I don't know her work I'm not quite sure what it signals. [The Library of Congress seems] to have tried, in recent years, to appoint someone whose work is more accessible and who has skills as a teacher and promoter of poetry (and not just as a star poet)."

Autumn House Press publisher Michael Sims, though, praised Ryan for her "quirky, humorous" verse and called her choice "an interesting one."

Ryan, who replaces Charles Simic, begins her term Oct. 16 when she is to open the library's literary series. She has no other official duties, but many laureates have promoted their own projects through the position. The salary is $35,000.

Through her publisher, Ryan turned down a request for a Post-Gazette interview, claiming she was "inundated."