Synopses & Reviews
"Mary Ruefle is one of the brilliant American poets of our time. Her work combines the spiritual desperation of Dickinson with the rhetorical virtuosity of Wallace Stevens. The result is a poetry at once ornate and intense; linguistically marvelous, yes, but also as visceral as anything you are likely to encounter."Tony Hoagland
"In poems striking for their vivid, playful, and original use of the imagination, [Mary Ruefle] brings us an often unnerving, but always fresh and exhilarating view of our common experience of the world."Charles Simic
Selected Poems brings together the finest work from Mary Ruefle's distinguished and inimitable poetic career, showcasing the arc of her development as one of the most expert, surprising, and hilarious practitioners of the art. Anyone who wishes for poetry to be both richly challenging and thoroughly entertaining need look no further than this monolithic retrospective by a contemporary master.
Mary Ruefle, winner of the 2011 William Carlos Williams Award for Selected Poems, has published ten books of poetry, a book of prose (The Most of It, Wave Books, 2008), and a comic book; she is also an erasure artist whose treatments of nineteenth-century texts have been exhibited in museums and galleries, and published in A Little White Shadow (Wave Books, 2006). Mary 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.
Review
"Her language is simple and direct, even when the poem itself is not; 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. Her poems tend to absurdism — a poem titled 'Barbarians' describes a field of lounging cows, while 'My Happiness' follows a meandering porcupine." Jeannine Hall Gailey, The Rumpus
Review
"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
Review
"That her work has not yet won any major award is absurd. 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 (Ron Slate)
Synopsis
A career-defining retrospective by a much-beloved contemporary master.
Synopsis
A career-defining retrospective by a much-beloved contemporary master.
Selected Poems gathers together the finest work from her distinguished and inimitable poetic career, showcasing the arc of her development as one of the most brilliant, expert and hilarious practitioners of the art. Anyone who wishes for poetry to be both richly challenging and thoroughly entertaining, need look no further than this monolithic retrospective.
About the Author
Mary Ruefle has published ten 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 published in A Little White Shadow (Wave Books, 2006). Mary 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.