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From Stephen Elliott
Q: What is the difference between a poem and a cloud?
A: Not very much, according to the poet Mary Ruefle in this (delightful) interview, found in Music & Literature:
...moreThe clouds are written to us, as we are the only ones to receive them, we the living.
A good thing to do on a Monday is to go and read, or re-read, Mary Ruefle’s beautiful essay I remember at the poetry foundation — a beautiful meditation on childhood, cows and her first electric typewriter (and also, just about everything else).
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Mary Ruefle wasn’t good at teaching on the fly so she wrote a series of lectures for her poetry classes. This is one of them.
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Madness, Rack, and Honey is a gift from a rigorous intellect, unflinching critic, and a big old sloppy heart. Ruefle has created a work of poetry from the daunting task of writing about it.
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Mary Ruefle’s Selected Poems is best appreciated not for its message or its drama, but for its expert way at guiding a reader through the writer’s lively imagination.