Dunce - Softcover

Ruefle, Mary

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1940696992 ISBN 13: 9781940696997

Publisher: Wave Books, 2021

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author

Mary Ruefle is the author of many books, including Dunce(Wave Books, 2019), which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry, and the LA Times Book Award; 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, where she serves as the state's poet laureate.

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Errand

To find things out—

that is the great adventure!

To find out the writing on the birthday cake

was toothpaste.

To find out Musical Chairs

was for real.

Find out Lord made the world

then threw the leftover rocks

in a pile and left.

Nettles growing nearby

spliced themselves into

days—find it out!

Checkless griff. Bitter love.

Modern hell. Bloody tears.

Beneath an ordinary glance

dwells an explosive.

Go to market.

Find all this out,

find everything out.

Even if your last day is

incomplete, even if something up there

thinks you are marzipan,

keep finding out—

for the stork who dropped us off

in the wilderness returns,

but with a bigger maw this time

so he can accommodate us

and all that we have found out

even if the terriblest part

is so condensed

we bear a resemblance

to the night sky.

Edition details

• Publisher: Wave Books
• Publication date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1940696992
• ISBN 13: 9781940696997
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 120