Description
Book Synopsis"One of the wisest books I've read in years, and it would be a shame to think that only poets will read it."--David Kirby, The New York Times Book Review, on Madness, Rack, and Honey "What a civil, undomesticable, and heartening poet is Mary Ruefle ...any Ruefle poem is an occasion of resonant wit and language, subject to an exacting intelligence."--Rodney Jones, Poetry Society of America, William Carlos Williams Award citation Trances of the Blast is a major new collection from recent National Book Critics Circle Award finalist Mary Ruefle. Full of Ruefle's particular wisdom and wit, the poems deliver her imaginative take on the world's rifts--its paradoxes, failures, and loss--and help us better appreciate its redeeming strangeness. If only I'd understood that loneliness was just loneliness, only loneliness and nothing more. But I was blind. Little did I know. If only I'd invented salt. I might have died happy. I wish I loved you, but you can't have everything. Mary Ruefle is the author of many books of prose, poetry, and erasures. She is the recipient of the William Carlos Williams Award, 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. Her book of lectures, Madness, Rack, and Honey, was named a finalist for the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award. She lives and teaches in Vermont.
Table of ContentsContents Saga Metaphysical Blight Spikenard The Estate of Single Blessedness Are We Alone? Is It Safe to Speak? Le Livre de ma Vie En Route Provenance Müller and Me Middle School Fireworks College Mimosa Greetings My Dear Ghost The Day New Morning Receiving News of the Devastation of My Mind Donkey On Midsummer at Jefferson Slough Jaroslav Goodnight Irene Nite Nite Marco Polo Little Eternities Favorite Song The Afternoon According to Saint Matthew On Velvet Turf Paris by Moonlight Albert Finney Agon Argot Helium Apologia Hold That Thought Ars Poetica Spider A Custom of Mourning Abdication A Penny for Your Thoughts One World at a Time Eric with the Light Brown Hair Happy Jumping Ahead Women in Labor Shalimar Tomorrow Will Be Beautiful The Bunny Gives Us a Lesson in Eternity Open Letter to My Ancestors Sawdust Broken Spoke Fall Leaf Studies Platonic Woodtangle Trances of the Blast White Buttons Faster Love Is All There Is The Seafood Fanciers Calm, How Darest Thou Wait The Art of Happiness For Carlos Literal Pipkins of the Mimulus Up Above Peridot Narrow Road to the North Wings of Love Dolorous Interlude Rumors of Earth What Went Ye Out Into May to See? Bloodroot Q&A Sudden Additional Energy Poem Written Before I Was Born Elegy for a Game With Love & Disregard Picking Up Pinecones Acknowledgments
