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FINALIST FOR THE 2020 PULITZER PRIZE IN POETRY
A finalist for both the 2019 National Book Critics Circle Award and a the LA Times Book Award, and longlisted for the National Book Award.
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.
Ruefle delivers a giddy, incisive ode to failure, fragility, and unknowing in her 12th book. "It may be our heads/ are filled with feathers/ from the stuff/ we don't know," she hazards, tiptoeing through one after another outlandish scenario sketched with uncanny delicacy. Many of these poems conceal sly fragments of lyric allusion or history: "I loved to wander, utterly alone"; "The fourteenth way of looking at/ a blackbird is mine." Rhymes abound as though refusing resistance to such play, and a poem that opens in euphoria ("What a beautiful day for a wedding!") ends, just a few lines later, in despair ("I hate my poems"). However, the poet reassures the reader that such states are kindred, even twinned. Ruefle celebrates the world's imagination and mystery: "I want to thank my clothes for protecting my body. I want to/ fold them properly—I want/ the energy that flows from my hands/ to engulf the world./ Upon reflection, this is not/ possible. Upon reflection/ it is I who am pummeled by/ the world, that vast massage/ machine." These poems grace the readers with wonder, wisdom, and whim "conducted/ without compromise," securing Ruefle's reputation among poets as the patron saint of childhood and the everyday.
—Publishers Weekly, starred review
Contents
Apple in Water
Long White Cloud
Solomon
Dunce
The Good Fortune of Material Existence
Maria and the Halls of Perish
Crackerbell
Resin
A Late Dense Work
Midnight Express
General Direction
Earthly Failure
Tuna and a Play
Suddenly
Unbeknownst
Dark Corner
Attention!
Little Stream
Meditation on My Skull
North Wind
Happiness
Lorraine
The Eventualist
Are You Talking about a Funeral?
The Friend
Sent to the Monk
Bath Time
Searchlight
I Cannot Be Quiet an Hour
Interlude for a Solitary Flute
Muguet des Bois
Dispirited While Packing My Books…
The Death of Atahualpa at the Hands of Pizarro’s Men
Singular Dream
Patience
Lightly, Very Lightly
Inglenook
Super Bowl
Jewelweed
The Unfurl
Sequoia
The Note
Special Delivery
A New Dawn
Nixie
Little Travel Book
Grandma Moses
The Heart of Princess Osra
Lillian
Wintersault
Destination
Happy Birthday
Origin Myth
The Cake
A Morning Person
Vow of Extinction
How We Met
Errand
The Butter Festival
30 March
Halloween
Boutonniere
Genesis
The Leaves
Acknowledgments