Staff Pick
After I finished reading Madness, Rack, and Honey, I looked up and said, “I have found the book that I will take to the You Can Only Have One Book on This Island, island.” Madness, Rack and Honey is intelligent, witty, beautiful, and the closest thing I’ve found to a bible; it takes the hidden mystery of poetry and solves it by pulling back the curtain and exposing that what’s behind is nothing more than a playground with at least one ride for everyone. I will read this book again and again. Recommended By D Lozano, Powells.com
Mary Ruefle's lectures are rich in their simplicity, and every one of the countless stunning images she delivers deepen and expand as time passes. When I first stumbled upon her beautiful little collection years ago, poetry was transfigured from the esoteric and inaccessible art that high school ruined to a field bursting with wonder and boundless possibility. Even if you feel like poetry isn't for you, this book is. Recommended By Cosima C., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
This is one of the wisest books I've read in years...
New York Times Book ReviewNo writer I know of comes close to even trying to articulate the weird magic of poetry as Ruefle does. She acknowledges and celebrates in the odd mystery and mysticism of the actthe fact that poetry must both guard and reveal, hint at and pull back... Also, and maybe most crucially, Ruefles work is never once stuffy or overdone: she writes this stuff with a level of seriousness-as-play thats vital and welcome, that doesnt make writing poetry sound anything but wild, strange, life-enlargening fun. -The Kenyon Review
Profound, unpredictable, charming, and outright funny...These informal talks have far more staying power and verve than most of their kind. Readers may come away dazzled, as well as amused... Publishers Weekly
This is a book not just for poets but for anyone interested in the human heart, the inner-life, the breath exhaling a completion of an idea that will make you feel changed in some way. This is a desert island book. Matthew Dickman
The accomplished poet is humorous and self-deprecating in this collection of illuminating essays on poetry, aesthetics and literature... San Francisco Examiner
Over the course of fifteen years, Mary Ruefle delivered a lecture every six months to a group of poetry graduate students. Collected here for the first time, these lectures include "Poetry and the Moon," "Someone Reading a Book Is a Sign of Order in the World," and "Lectures I Will Never Give." Intellectually virtuosic, instructive, and experiential, Madness, Rack, and Honey resists definition, demanding instead an utterand utterly pleasurableimmersion. Finalist for the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award.
Mary Ruefle has published more than a dozen books of poetry, prose, and erasures. She lives in Vermont.
Synopsis
Cultural criticism meets poetry memoira contemporary master reflects on a life dedicated to poetry.
Synopsis
"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
"For more than thirty years, she has freshened American poetry by humbly glorifying both the inner life and the outward experience."William Carlos Williams Award citation
Over the course of fifteen years, Mary Ruefle delivered a lecture every six months to a group of poetry graduate students. Collected here for the first time, these lectures include "Poetry and the Moon," "Someone Reading A Book Is A Sign Of Order In The World," and "Lectures I Will Never Give." Intellectually virtuosic, instructive, and experiential, Madness, Rack, and Honey resists definition, demanding instead an utterand utterly pleasurableimmersion.
Mary Ruefle has published more than a dozen books of poetry, prose, and erasures. She lives in Vermont.
Synopsis
Literary Nonfiction. Poetry History and Criticism. Over the course of 15 years, award-winning poet Mary Ruefle delivered a lecture every six months to a group of poetry graduate students. Collected here for the first time, these lectures articulate the wisdom accrued through a life dedicated entirely to poetry. Intellectually virtuosic, instructive and experiential, MADNESS, RACK, AND HONEY resists definition, demanding instead an utter—and utterly pleasurable—immersion.
For every time I read a poem I am willing to die...
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.