num_pages: 326
description: This is one of the wisest books I've read in years... New York Times Book ReviewNo writer I know of comes close to even trying to articulate the weird magic of poetry as Ruefle does. She acknowledges and celebrates in the odd mystery and mysticism of the actthe fact that poetry must both guard and reveal hint at and pull back... Also and maybe most crucially Ruefles work is never once stuffy or overdone: she writes this stuff with a level of seriousness-as-play thats vital and welcome that doesnt make writing poetry sound anything but wild strange life-enlargening fun. The Kenyon ReviewProfound unpredictable charming and outright funny...These informal talks have far more staying power and verve than most of their kind. Readers may come away dazzled as well as amused... Publishers WeeklyThis is a book not just for poets but for anyone interested in the human heart the inner-life the breath exhaling a completion of an idea that will make you feel changed in some way. This is a desert island book. Matthew DickmanThe accomplished poet is humorous and self-deprecating in this collection of illuminating essays on poetry aesthetics and literature... San Francisco ExaminerOver the course of fifteen years Mary Ruefle delivered a lecture every six months to a group of poetry graduate students. Collected here for the first time these lectures include Poetry and the Moon Someone Reading a Book Is a Sign of Order in the World and Lectures I Will Never Give. Intellectually virtuosic instructive and experiential Madness Rack and Honey resists definition demanding instead an utterand utterly pleasurableimmersion. Finalist for the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award.Mary Ruefle has published more than a dozen books of poetry prose and erasures. She lives in Vermont.
language: English
title: Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures
publisher: Wave Books