Selected Poems

by Mary Ruefle

Overview

"[ Selected Poems ] offers readers a chance to catch on to one of the most distinctive talents of our time, one of the few who can genuinely startle. . . . Ruefle is clearly one of the best American poets writing, and her body of work is remarkable for its spiritual force, intelligence, stylistic virtuosity, and adventurousness."—Tony Hoagland

of all things standing furthest
from what is real, stand these trees
shaking with dispensable joy . . .

Mary Ruefle is the winner of the 2011 William Carlos Williams Award and has authored ten collections of poetry; The Most of It , a book of prose; and A Little White Shadow , a collection of erasures. She teaches at Vermont College.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781933517568
Publisher:	Wave Books
Publication date:	08/16/2011
Edition description:	Second Edition
Pages:	176
Sales rank:	313,517
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Mary Ruefle is the author of Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures , a finalist for the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award in criticism (Wave Books, 2012), and Selected Poems (Wave Books, 2010), winner of the William Carlos Williams Award. She has published ten other books of poetry, a book of prose ( The Most of It , Wave Books, 2008), and a comic book, Go Home and Go to Bed! , (Pilot Books/Orange Table Comics, 2007); she is also an erasure artist, whose treatments of nineteenth century texts have been exhibited in museums and galleries, and include the publication of A Little White Shadow (Wave Books, 2006). Ruefle is the recipient of numerous honors, including an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, and a Whiting Award. She lives in Bennington, Vermont, and teaches in the MFA program at Vermont College.

Table of Contents

Standing Furthest; Transpontine; Replica; The Intended; From Memory; Patient; Without an Acre; All the Activity There Is; Barbarians; Perfume River; At the North Pole; The Beautiful Is Negative; The Last Supper; Pen and Ink; Depicted on a Screen; Heaven on Earth; The Beginnings of Idleness in Assisi; Lapland; Diary of Action and Repose; How It Is; Timberland; Cul-de-Sac; The Pedant's Discourse; Instrument of the Highest; Naked Ladies; Towards the Correction of Youthful Ignorance; Trust Me; Entirely, Eventually; Nice Hands; Rain Effect; Cold Pluto; Out of a Hundred; Merengue; Topophilia; Perpetually Attempting to Soar; Talking to Strangers; The Brooch; The Cart; The March; Ancestors; The Butcher's Story; The Hand; Minor Figure; Glory; The Wild Rose Bush; The Balloon; Perfect Reader; Tilapia; The Passing of Time; When Adults Talk; Marked; Argosy; Sentimental Education; Chilly Autumn Evenings; The Jewel; County Fair; The Letter; Pressed for Details; The Edge; Furtherness; Thistle; Nothing Like the Earth; Full Moon; Silk Land; Against the Sky; Mariposa and the Doll; Patina; Mercy; Among the Musk Ox People; Seven Postcards from Dover; The Tragic Drama of Joy; The Great Loneliness; The Feast; Zettel; Japanese Bloodgod; Magnificat; My Life as a Farmer (by James Dean); Critique of Little Errors; Concerning Essential Existence; Do Not Disturb; The Little I Saw of Cuba; In the Office of the Therapist I Behold the Extinguished Guests; The Nutshell; Why I Am Not a Good Kisser; Proscenium Arch; Oh Myrtie; From Here to Eternity; A Picture of Christ; Gathered on a Friday in the Hour of Jupiter; How I Became Impossible; The Tenor of Your Yes; My Happiness; The Meal That Way Always There; Kiss of the Sun; Pontiac; My Timid Eternity; Sweet Morning; The Imperial Ambassador of the Infinite; After a Rain; Thirteen; Lines Written on a Blank Space; Little Questions; Quick Note About the Think Source; Kettle; Lullaby

Editorial Reviews

"Her Selected Poems, like the work of William Carlos Williams, is a testimony not only to the power of artfulness, but to human empathy."—Rodney Jones, from his 2011 William Carlos Williams Award citation

"This first retrospective collection from Ruefle, which selects from her nine previous books of poetry... shows her to be a poet of visionary imagination, abiding sensitivity, and melancholy humor."—Publishers Weekly

"One of the enjoyable paradoxes of reading Ruefle’s work is how easy it is to read, but how many possible meanings you can make. Though sometimes described as an experimental or “post-avant” poet, I have always found Ruefle’s work intelligently accessible, charming and reader-friendly."—Jeannine Hall Gailey, The Rumpus

"Ruefle is clearly one of the best American poets writing, and her body of work is remarkable for its spiritual force, intelligence, stylistic virtuosity, and adventurousness."—Tony Hoagland, On the Seawall

From the Publisher

This first retrospective collection from Ruefle, which selects from her nine previous books of poetry, the earliest of which first appeared in 1982, shows her to be a poet of visionary imagination, abiding sensitivity, and melancholy humor. This book also reveals Ruefle to be in the habit of writing one kind of poem--first person, usually set in unbroken columns about half a page long; it's a good kind of poem, but can become tiresome in large doses. Most remarkable, especially in the early poems, is the quiet, straightforward clarity of her voice, something deceptively hard to achieve: "One wants simply, said the lady,/ to sit on the bank and throw stones/ while another wishes he were standing/ in the Victoria and Albert Museum," reads "The Intended," which moves along with a characteristic kind of wisdom. More recent poems, such as those from her acclaimed collection Tristimania, turn either toward a kind of surrealism or exaggerated reality for its power: "I failed to put the cap back on the glue./ But it has been a beautiful day." While Ruefle has long been a favorite poet among poets, her books have mostly appeared with small university presses, making them hard to find; this accessible selection should bring them to a wider audience. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly