Selected Poems [Hardcover]

Mary Ruefle (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2010

Poetry. 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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

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.) (c)
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Review

"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 the 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

"People sometimes ask me which recent books of poetry I enjoyed reading, and I reply, with embarrassment, that because reading poetry books is my job, I don’t often think of them in terms of how enjoyable they are; I think of them as 'interesting' or 'not interesting.' Pathetic, I know. But I not only found this book interesting, I enjoyed it. And I hope it wins Mary Ruefle the Pulitzer, especially if they give you some kind of statuette for that, because I think Ruefle would make a flower vase or spaceship out of it."— Joel Brouwer, The Poetry Foundation

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 168 pages
• Publisher: Wave Books; 1 edition (September 1, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 193351745X
• ISBN-13: 978-1933517452
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #137,821 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars 'an infant is born without feet', February 2, 2011

By 

Simon G. Barrett (london, england) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Selected Poems (Hardcover)

I've been reading two recent Wave titles concurrently (I belong to their subscription service) and it's an eye-opener. Mary Ruefle is the older of the two. Her early work is a bit effete (japonaiserie; too many birds) but better that than jejune (eg John Bradley's You don't know... see review) but by the last quarter I was really fired up (see poems on p116, 121, 127, 132, 139) - now I shall have to read the whole darn thing again!

The other book, which I finished first, was Michael Earl Craig's Thin Kimono (see review); this is a slimmer affair, though substantial enough as slim volumes go, and I didn't get into it till 2/3 in. Hmm... BUT THEN the last 1/3 totally grabbed me (boom! boom! boom!) and goddammit I DID go back and read it again - and it's ALL GOOD; I give you p43, 69, 93 - but there's not a dud or duff in the pack. Guess you gotta keep plugging away...

So - double whammy. But these poets aren't alike, other than being 'of their age'. I would distinguish them as follows: Ruefle is sad, and lyrical, and serious (cf her echo of Prufrock 'I can hear the ambulance singing' p132); Craig is tender, and whimsical, and serious; they meet in their common seriousness (easy to mistake in Craig's hilarious surface - see p85, 97)

Since I've quoted Ruefle above, I can't resist a sample (not typical!) from Craig, despite the danger that it might put some people off. (Sorry, Mary - but hey, you're stablemates, right?) This is a complete poem from an exquisite sequence of 8-liners

Fat? Maybe.

A grape candy melts on my tongue.

The gangrels samba through the sacristy.

I have this ferocious feeling.

The glacier scoots in an inch.

An ivory beak stabs sharply at my dream.

Varieties of corn rain down,

Violating the autumn.

But the rest of the collection is generally more user-friendly than that. And, yes, I had to google 'gangrel' too (and was disappointed to find it wasn't made up); but that line has an Eliotelian panache, don't you think? 'The prayer of the bone on the beach...' Line 6 and lines 7-8 too. Can this man do no wrong?

But I'll finish with another Ruefle quote (from p35): Who wanted 'feet' [sorry - can't do italics!] in the first place?

NB Wave also reprinted James Tate's stunning stories last year. Subscribe now! Great poets need great readers!!!