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Staff Pick
I came late to Mary Ruefle's poetry, influenced by her many passionate admirers among the Powell's staff. Her language is at times unadorned, somewhat like W. S. Merwin's, filled with grace, revelatory juxtapositions, and the beauty of the natural world. If you haven't yet read her, let the extraordinary Dunce, her 19th collection, be your starting point as well. Recommended By Jill O., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
Longlisted for the 2019 National Book Awards
Through her many projects across numerous genres, Mary Ruefle has proven herself a singular artist, drawing many fans from around the world to her unique vision. With Dunce she returns to the practice that has always been at her core: the making of poems. With her startlingly fresh sensibility, she enraptures us in poem after poem by the intensity of her attention, with the imaginative flourishes of her being-in-the-world, which is always deep with mysteries, unexpected appearances, and abiding yearning.
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"A riot of quirkiness and eccentricity, and the mood of the book, which shifts from droll humor to melancholy to gentle vulnerability, is unclassifiable — and just right." Kirkus
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"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
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"Ruefle is the Poet Laureate of the City of Ideas — surreal and lyrical and deeply moving at the same time." Los Angeles Review of Books
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"[She is] a poet of visionary imagination, abiding sensitivity, and melancholy humor." Publishers Weekly
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"For more than thirty years, she has freshened American poetry by humbly glorifying both the inner life and the outward experience." Rodney Jones, Poetry Society of America
About the Author
Mary Ruefle is the author of many books, including Dunce (Wave Books, forthcoming), My Private Property (Wave Books, 2016), Trances of the Blast (Wave Books, 2013), Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures (Wave Books, 2012), which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism, and Selected Poems (Wave Books, 2010), which was the winner of the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America. She is the recipient of numerous honors, including the Robert Creeley 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. She lives in Bennington, Vermont.