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Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures
Over 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 utter—and utterly pleasurable—immersion.
Mary Ruefle has published more than a dozen books of poetry, prose, and erasures. She lives in Vermont.
Mary Ruefle has published more than a dozen books of poetry, prose, and erasures. She lives in Vermont.
326 pages, Paperback
First published August 14, 2012
About the author
Mary Ruefle
43 books389 followersMary Ruefle is an American poet and essayist. The daughter of a military officer, Ruefle was born outside Pittsburgh in 1952, but spent her early life traveling around the U.S. and Europe. She graduated from Bennington College in 1974 with a degree in Literature.
Ruefle's work has been widely published in literary journals. She has received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, a Whiting Writer's Award, a Guggenheim fellowship, and an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Ruefle currently lives in New England. She teaches in the MFA in Writing program at Vermont College and is visiting faculty with the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop.
For more information on this author, go to:
http://www.wavepoetry.com/authors/50-...
Ruefle's work has been widely published in literary journals. She has received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, a Whiting Writer's Award, a Guggenheim fellowship, and an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Ruefle currently lives in New England. She teaches in the MFA in Writing program at Vermont College and is visiting faculty with the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop.
For more information on this author, go to:
http://www.wavepoetry.com/authors/50-...
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 326 reviews
August 9, 2012
Currently reading forever.
Date I finished this book: upon my death.
Date I finished this book: upon my death.
September 2, 2012
I'm 73 pages into this book and fuck if it isn't already one of the greatest books of my life.
September 15, 2023
I read this book two years ago and wrote the hysterically enthusiastic (or enthusiastically hysterical) review below. Re-reading the book now I still love it but wonder if I haven't reread it too soon. (How soon is too soon to be rereading a book? And should one reread one's own book reviews? I feel one could write a book on these questions.) Rereading, like nostalgia, is a delicate, dangerous art to be handled by experts only, for non-experts like me will always knock over a vase or two in the antechambers of the past.
7 April 2021 review:
This book
This book contains so much wisdom, poetry and charm I’d be tempted to quote it in full to you. But then reading my review of it would be the same thing as reading the book. Best read the book.
If I were a student armed with a fluorescent marker pen and had borrowed this book from the library, I’d be ashamed to return it.
Not only is this book eminently quotable, but it contains a treasure trove of unforgettable quotes from authors that I will never remember (I do not own a fluorescent marker pen).
Were I a prisoner on an island unfit for the cultivation of books, would I choose to have this book tattooed on the inside of my brain? Perhaps.
Had I to recommend one book to everyone, I would certainly NOT recommend this book. No this is the kind of book best kept a secret handshake between strangers. A way of knowing if another soul dances to the same tune as yours does.
Pick up a copy of this book and before reading it, just run your eye down its selected bibliography. I will bet you the complete works of any author you like that your mind will begin to water. If it doesn’t, then this book is not for you.
This book is mostly about death. Because its author, a still-living poet, says: poets are dead people talking about being alive. Does this sound reassuring to you? Strangely enough, it does to me.
But I do not recommend this book to you. No no stay away from this book. Unless, of course, your soul dances to the sound of madness, rack, and honey as this book’s soul and mine do.
August 20, 2017
Reread in August 2017: Still the best.
Original review: What IS this book?? It's like a Mary Poppins bag full of treasures--you just keep pulling out more beauty with every page, with every re-read. Even though I have been to enough boring and pretentious lectures on poetry to fully appreciate these insightful, messy, gorgeous pieces, I don't think being interested in poetry is a prerequisite to reading this book. Highly, highly recommended.
Original review: What IS this book?? It's like a Mary Poppins bag full of treasures--you just keep pulling out more beauty with every page, with every re-read. Even though I have been to enough boring and pretentious lectures on poetry to fully appreciate these insightful, messy, gorgeous pieces, I don't think being interested in poetry is a prerequisite to reading this book. Highly, highly recommended.
Read
July 5, 2021To paraphrase Mary Ruefle paraphrasing W H Auden speaking about a good poem, this book is more interesting than anything I can say about it.
March 14, 2016
after i finished reading this book, i looked up and said, "i have found the book that i will take to the You Can Only Have One Book On This Island, island.
i want to eat this book so the pages wrap around my bones and the ink leaks into my blood.
i don't know where mary ruefle lives, how old she is, or anything about her but i want to find her, and
follow her around and carry her books and throw my jacket over a puddle so her smart, smart shoes don't get muddy.
i will read this book again and again.
i want to eat this book so the pages wrap around my bones and the ink leaks into my blood.
i don't know where mary ruefle lives, how old she is, or anything about her but i want to find her, and
follow her around and carry her books and throw my jacket over a puddle so her smart, smart shoes don't get muddy.
i will read this book again and again.
November 14, 2014
“I used to think I wrote because there was something I wanted to say. Then I thought, ‘I will continue to write because I have not yet said what I wanted to say;’ but I know now I continue to write because I have not yet heard what I have been listening to.”
With deep gratitude for Celeste for lending me her much-loved copy. Such a gorgeous collection of writing on poetry, meaning, and inspiration! I had not heard of Mary Ruefle until someone told me I had to read her and that this series of lectures was particularly excellent (fun fact: It’s the highest-rated book on my to-read shelf). I agree wholeheartedly with that assessment. This is particularly excellent. Ruefle’s style combines many of my favorite elements in an essayist: mystical asides, plenty of literary allusions, mini-anecdotes, snippets of history and fact. Can’t get enough.
Her lecture on reading (“Someone Reading a Book Is a Sign of Order in the World”) had me in total raptures. I started writing down quotes from it and then slowly realized that I was just copying the entire piece verbatim. (We read Proust in the exact same way—one volume a year, in our twenties, because an older man told us it was the only thing that mattered—I feel that we might be soulmates, Mary and me!) I also loved her joint lecture on Emily Dickinson, Emily Brontë, and Anne Frank; her meditation on fear; her lecture about theme and sentimentality; an exposition of the irreverence of art.
Read it; savor it; thank God we have poets such as these.
(Also, I think I have to buy this book now.)
“Did I mention supreme joy? That is why I read: I want everything to be okay. That’s why I read when I was a lonely kid and that’s why I read now that I’m a scared adult. It’s a sincere desire, but a sincere desire always complicated things—the universe has a peculiar reaction to our sincere desires. Still, I believe the planet on the table, even when wounded and imperfect, fragmented and deprived, is worthy of being called whole. Our minds and the universe—what else is there?”
With deep gratitude for Celeste for lending me her much-loved copy. Such a gorgeous collection of writing on poetry, meaning, and inspiration! I had not heard of Mary Ruefle until someone told me I had to read her and that this series of lectures was particularly excellent (fun fact: It’s the highest-rated book on my to-read shelf). I agree wholeheartedly with that assessment. This is particularly excellent. Ruefle’s style combines many of my favorite elements in an essayist: mystical asides, plenty of literary allusions, mini-anecdotes, snippets of history and fact. Can’t get enough.
Her lecture on reading (“Someone Reading a Book Is a Sign of Order in the World”) had me in total raptures. I started writing down quotes from it and then slowly realized that I was just copying the entire piece verbatim. (We read Proust in the exact same way—one volume a year, in our twenties, because an older man told us it was the only thing that mattered—I feel that we might be soulmates, Mary and me!) I also loved her joint lecture on Emily Dickinson, Emily Brontë, and Anne Frank; her meditation on fear; her lecture about theme and sentimentality; an exposition of the irreverence of art.
Read it; savor it; thank God we have poets such as these.
(Also, I think I have to buy this book now.)
“Did I mention supreme joy? That is why I read: I want everything to be okay. That’s why I read when I was a lonely kid and that’s why I read now that I’m a scared adult. It’s a sincere desire, but a sincere desire always complicated things—the universe has a peculiar reaction to our sincere desires. Still, I believe the planet on the table, even when wounded and imperfect, fragmented and deprived, is worthy of being called whole. Our minds and the universe—what else is there?”
May 29, 2021
What would you think if you come to a book because you wish to know more about poetry, about the craft, about how a poet is inspired to write and find that it tells you more about life, about living, about that feeling of being alive.
Where, as you flip through the pages, you start discovering a voice, not of the writer’s but your own, coming to you from hidden recesses of your mind. An awareness which, as it gazes across words, appearing pages after pages, as if being uttered for the very first time by the writer, begins simultaneously to turn inwards.
Where the echo of those words bring a cerebration of your own thoughts and make you wonder if you know anything about life at all.
This book by Mary Ruefle, a collection of her lectures on poetry, isn’t just a brilliant book of criticism. It is a beautiful work which invariably prompts you to dig deeper into the craft, into the places and ideas it seems to come from, into secrets and fear and madness, into the beginnings and endings, in a language which is pleasantly personal, even bewitching.
Her voice, alternately smart and silly (to borrow from David Kirby in The New York Times) puts forth fresh, intuitive and ingenious views in a subtle, sometimes humorous, manner thereby making it a delightful, delightful read.
Where, as you flip through the pages, you start discovering a voice, not of the writer’s but your own, coming to you from hidden recesses of your mind. An awareness which, as it gazes across words, appearing pages after pages, as if being uttered for the very first time by the writer, begins simultaneously to turn inwards.
Where the echo of those words bring a cerebration of your own thoughts and make you wonder if you know anything about life at all.
This book by Mary Ruefle, a collection of her lectures on poetry, isn’t just a brilliant book of criticism. It is a beautiful work which invariably prompts you to dig deeper into the craft, into the places and ideas it seems to come from, into secrets and fear and madness, into the beginnings and endings, in a language which is pleasantly personal, even bewitching.
Her voice, alternately smart and silly (to borrow from David Kirby in The New York Times) puts forth fresh, intuitive and ingenious views in a subtle, sometimes humorous, manner thereby making it a delightful, delightful read.
February 21, 2013
Mary Ruefle’s dazzling and idiosyncratic Madness, Rack, and Honey is the freshest and most startling piece of criticism I have read in a long time. The book is billed as “collected lectures,” with titles such as “Poetry and the Moon” and “On Fear,” but they have about as much in common with the standard academic lecture as spicy homemade salsa does with ketchup. Ruefle’s voice is rangy and intellectually supple, capable of conjuring with the knottiest questions of identity and narrative in one breath and then swooping to the personal or lyrical in the next. Especially tonic is the author’s impatience with stodgy, unquestioned verities or lazy thinking in general; at times, she bristles with exasperation. About Emily Dickinson, she writes, “I would no more tell you about my relationship with her poems than I would tell you about a love affair. If she is yours, I hope you feel the same way,” a critical tactic I am not sure I have ever encountered before but that I find delightful.
From the Washington Post, February 20, 2013
From the Washington Post, February 20, 2013
May 31, 2020
What's madness is the libraries are all closed and I'm back to my old spending habits, buying books. I'm racked by how quickly they are falling, too, one after the other. I bought three recently, counting on their companionship for weeks, and here I am squandering them in days, quickly reaching the end and growing lonely for them.
This is especially the case when reading essays, when the voice becomes familiar and, by the end, almost appears to be coming from only a few feet away as you walk side by side, you and the voice, you and the wiser one who knows more about poetry than you, you and the person who values humor as much as you do.
The bibliography at the end attempts to cite as many of the books alluded to in this collection as possible. The list is sweetly tempting.
Oh, the thought of a mail delivery filled with, say, a dozen or so of these same books that no doubt are still on Mary Ruefle's shelves even as I write this (and you read this)! Such a notion is the honey, I swear, but I'd have to focus, focus, focus on the books themselves and not the cost. And where would I put them, anyway? And wouldn't I be messing up again and, like a cat left giant bowls of food by an owner gone for the week, consuming it all in mere days if it were placed before me?
Guilty until proven innocent. That'd be me all right. Mr. Undisciplined. Mr. Denied His Public Library Just When Sanity Was Imposed. Mr. It's Only a Small Order I'm Placing, I Promise! (This spoken to my wife, who's looking at me askance in a pose that any sculptor would title "The Skeptic.")
This is especially the case when reading essays, when the voice becomes familiar and, by the end, almost appears to be coming from only a few feet away as you walk side by side, you and the voice, you and the wiser one who knows more about poetry than you, you and the person who values humor as much as you do.
The bibliography at the end attempts to cite as many of the books alluded to in this collection as possible. The list is sweetly tempting.
Oh, the thought of a mail delivery filled with, say, a dozen or so of these same books that no doubt are still on Mary Ruefle's shelves even as I write this (and you read this)! Such a notion is the honey, I swear, but I'd have to focus, focus, focus on the books themselves and not the cost. And where would I put them, anyway? And wouldn't I be messing up again and, like a cat left giant bowls of food by an owner gone for the week, consuming it all in mere days if it were placed before me?
Guilty until proven innocent. That'd be me all right. Mr. Undisciplined. Mr. Denied His Public Library Just When Sanity Was Imposed. Mr. It's Only a Small Order I'm Placing, I Promise! (This spoken to my wife, who's looking at me askance in a pose that any sculptor would title "The Skeptic.")
January 30, 2018
If you're interested in poetry criticism, then I think this book has a lot to offer. Ruefle made me reflect on what I'm getting out of poetry, and how I might expand my experience of poetry - I definitely think that I will be able to use this collection to become a better poetry reader. If you have absolutely zero interest in poetry (or criticism) then this is definitely not the work for you.
She writes consistently about language, and the connection of language and what that connection means. Here's a taster, which is representative of a good chunk of the collection:
My favorite lecture by far was "My Emily Dickinson", in which she uses Emily Dickinson, Emily Bronte and Anne Frank to talk about what it means to experience the world. The progression of this lecture is so perfect I don't want to mention anything else about it, for fear of spoiling the surprise. The rest were mostly interesting, with a few bright spots. I disliked the "Twenty-Two Short Lectures" - they honestly felt like Lydia Davis stories, only less endearing in this non-fiction setting. Overall, I think this evens out somewhere into 3-stars, though I did think it was genuinely interesting and worth reading.
(As a footnote, I absolutely love the prose-poetry I've read from Ruefle, and I would strongly recommend her collection My Private Property)
She writes consistently about language, and the connection of language and what that connection means. Here's a taster, which is representative of a good chunk of the collection:
And I am at once struck by what a perfect example the poem is regarding metaphor as event. Metaphor as time, the time it takes for an exchange of energy to occur. Metaphor is not, and never has been, a mere literary term. It is an event. A poem must rival a physical experience and metaphor is, simply, an exchange of energy between two things. If you believe that metaphor is an event, and not just a literary term denoting comparison, then you must conclude that a certain philosophy arises: the philosophy that everything in the world is connected.
My favorite lecture by far was "My Emily Dickinson", in which she uses Emily Dickinson, Emily Bronte and Anne Frank to talk about what it means to experience the world. The progression of this lecture is so perfect I don't want to mention anything else about it, for fear of spoiling the surprise. The rest were mostly interesting, with a few bright spots. I disliked the "Twenty-Two Short Lectures" - they honestly felt like Lydia Davis stories, only less endearing in this non-fiction setting. Overall, I think this evens out somewhere into 3-stars, though I did think it was genuinely interesting and worth reading.
(As a footnote, I absolutely love the prose-poetry I've read from Ruefle, and I would strongly recommend her collection My Private Property)
November 23, 2013
Ostensibly, Mary Ruefle's lectures are about poetry.
What they're really about is being alive to wonder and vulnerable to curiosity--an openness of being that often manifests itself in the poet, but that is not necessarily limited to poets. As such, these lectures (essays, really) are digressive and full of cul-de-sacs, meandering through a landscape strewn with the wisdom of poets, which is a type of wisdom we would do well to heed. Ruefle does not draw many conclusions, other than than in the vaguest way; therein lies her charm (her sense of humor helps, too).
[1st read in August 2012. Reread in November 2013.]
What they're really about is being alive to wonder and vulnerable to curiosity--an openness of being that often manifests itself in the poet, but that is not necessarily limited to poets. As such, these lectures (essays, really) are digressive and full of cul-de-sacs, meandering through a landscape strewn with the wisdom of poets, which is a type of wisdom we would do well to heed. Ruefle does not draw many conclusions, other than than in the vaguest way; therein lies her charm (her sense of humor helps, too).
[1st read in August 2012. Reread in November 2013.]
December 30, 2013
i've been reading this and ruefle's Selected Poems nonstop for about three months now, i just open one or the other at random and read a bit each night before i go to bed. sometimes i read a bit i've already read before and sometimes it is a new bit. but whether i have read it before or not it is always surprising and beautiful and perfect and fun. and usually heartbreaking too. i can't really say that i understand what ruelfe's doing but i sure do love it a lot.
April 11, 2013
Ruefle's got a creative and perceptive mind, of course, and this book is like a barrage of insightful arrows from that mind. Sometimes the arrows are too fluffy, aloof, and self-involved, getting caught up in crosswinds and becoming lost in the atmosphere of my attention span, but many hit the mark straight and true. Here's my favorite so far:
"We are all one question, and the best answer seems to be love -- a connection between things. This arcane bit of knowledge is respoken every day into the ears of readers of great books, and also appears to perpetually slip under a carpet, utterly forgotten. In one sense, reading is a great waste of time. In another sense, it is a great extension of time, a way for one person to live a thousand and one lives in a single life span, to watch the great impersonal universe at work again and again, to watch the great personal psyche spar with it, to suffer affliction and weakness and injury, to die and watch those you love die, until the very dizziness of it all becomes the source of compassion for ourselves, and for the language which we alone created, without which the letter that slipped under the door could never have been written, or, once in a thousand lives--is that too much to ask?--retrieved, and read. Did I mention supreme joy? That is why I read: I want everything to be okay. That's why I read when I was a lonely kid and that's why I read now that I'm a scared adult. It's a sincere desire, but sincere desire always complicates things--the universe has a peculiar reaction to our sincere desires. Still, I believe the planet on the table, even when it is wounded and imperfect, fragmented and deprived, is worthy of being called whole. Our minds and the universe--what else is there? Margaret Mead described intellectuals as those who are bored when they don't have the chance to talk interestingly enough. Now a book will talk interestingly to you. George Steiner describes the intellectual as one who can't read without a pencil in her hand. One who wants to talk back to the book, not take notes but make them: one who might write, "The giraffe speaks!" in the margin. In our marginal existence, what else is there but this voice within us, this great weirdness we are always leaning forward to listen to?"
"We are all one question, and the best answer seems to be love -- a connection between things. This arcane bit of knowledge is respoken every day into the ears of readers of great books, and also appears to perpetually slip under a carpet, utterly forgotten. In one sense, reading is a great waste of time. In another sense, it is a great extension of time, a way for one person to live a thousand and one lives in a single life span, to watch the great impersonal universe at work again and again, to watch the great personal psyche spar with it, to suffer affliction and weakness and injury, to die and watch those you love die, until the very dizziness of it all becomes the source of compassion for ourselves, and for the language which we alone created, without which the letter that slipped under the door could never have been written, or, once in a thousand lives--is that too much to ask?--retrieved, and read. Did I mention supreme joy? That is why I read: I want everything to be okay. That's why I read when I was a lonely kid and that's why I read now that I'm a scared adult. It's a sincere desire, but sincere desire always complicates things--the universe has a peculiar reaction to our sincere desires. Still, I believe the planet on the table, even when it is wounded and imperfect, fragmented and deprived, is worthy of being called whole. Our minds and the universe--what else is there? Margaret Mead described intellectuals as those who are bored when they don't have the chance to talk interestingly enough. Now a book will talk interestingly to you. George Steiner describes the intellectual as one who can't read without a pencil in her hand. One who wants to talk back to the book, not take notes but make them: one who might write, "The giraffe speaks!" in the margin. In our marginal existence, what else is there but this voice within us, this great weirdness we are always leaning forward to listen to?"
March 28, 2013
Matthew Dickman (Poetry Editor): The other day I was having a conversation with a friend who feels that the most human she ever feels is when watching Antonioni films. His art makes her feel brave and hopeful and complicated and found. I was thinking of art that makes me feel that way too. The first thing that came to mind was Mary Ruefle’s book Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures. This is a book of lectures by an incredible poet though the lectures are more than talks on poetry: they are talks about humanity. Whenever I read one of Mary’s pieces I feel better about being alive, wiser and kinder…at least for a few hours! Even if you are not a poetry reader you need to check this book out! And if you’re interested (and you should be) we at Tin House are honored to have two poems by Mary in our Winter Reading issue (2012). Madness! The Rack! Sweet Honey!
August 26, 2017
One of the best books I've ever read. Hard to say if non-writers will respond quite as strongly as I did (a lot of it is about writing and its peculiarities) but I feel sure any intelligent reader will be overwhelmed by its wisdom, sense of humor, humility, penetration, etc
September 13, 2012
I will never not be reading this book.
It's inspiring.
As a writer and as a teacher, I need this book and will always need it.
It's inspiring.
As a writer and as a teacher, I need this book and will always need it.
October 5, 2014
Superb series of poetic lectures/essays on poetry, literature, reading, theme, and Emily Dickinson. I would have underlined whole pages if I hadn't borrowed the book from a friend.
January 16, 2016
"Now I will give you a piece of advice. I will tell you something that I absolutely believe you should do, and if you do not do it you will never be a writer. It is a certain truth.
When your pencil is dull, sharpen it.
And when your pencil is sharp, use it until it is dull again."
Mary Ruefle is simply sublime and this collection of her written lectures is a treasure. A challenging but enjoyable read.
When your pencil is dull, sharpen it.
And when your pencil is sharp, use it until it is dull again."
Mary Ruefle is simply sublime and this collection of her written lectures is a treasure. A challenging but enjoyable read.
September 7, 2013
This is my new favorite "poets are people, too" book, a collection of lectures that's very approachable without sacrificing erudition. It turns far less on poetry than on staking one's own claim to anything one chooses to read -- as long as one has chosen to read deeply. Whatever these words sounded like when spoken in a seminar, on the page they read like comforting marginalia, short and piercing reactions to literature and to how we take it in. Thanks to the magic of someone else's obsessive Tumblr (http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/mary%20r...), here's what I mean:
“We are all one question, and the best answer seems to be love - a connection between things. This arcane bit of knowledge is respoken every day into the ears of readers of great books, and also appears to perpetually slip under a carpet, utterly forgotten. In one sense, reading is a great waste of time. In another sense, it is a great extension of time, a way for one person to live a thousand and one lives in a single lifespan, to watch the great impersonal universe at work again and again, to watch the great personal psyche spar with it, to suffer affliction and weakness and injury, to die and watch those you love die, until the very dizziness of it all becomes a source of compassion for ourselves, and our language, which we alone created, and without which the letter that slipped under the door could never have been written, or, once in a thousand lives - is that too much to ask? - retrieved, and read. Did I mention supreme joy? That is why I read: I want everything to be okay. That’s why I read when I was a lonely kid and that’s why I read now that I’m a scared adult. It’s a sincere desire, but a sincere desire always complicates things - the universe has a peculiar reaction to our sincere desires. Still, I believe the planet on the table, even when wounded and imperfect, fragmented and deprived, is worthy of being called whole. Our minds and the universe - what else is there? Margaret Mead described intellectuals as those who are bored when they don’t have the chance to talk interestingly enough. Now a book will talk interestingly to you. George Steiner describes the intellectual as one who can’t read without a pencil in her hand. One who wants to talk back to the book, not take notes but make them: one who might write 'The giraffe speaks!' in the margin. In our marginal existence, what else is there but this voice within us, this great weirdness we are always leaning forward to listen to?”
Yeah. Yeah!
“We are all one question, and the best answer seems to be love - a connection between things. This arcane bit of knowledge is respoken every day into the ears of readers of great books, and also appears to perpetually slip under a carpet, utterly forgotten. In one sense, reading is a great waste of time. In another sense, it is a great extension of time, a way for one person to live a thousand and one lives in a single lifespan, to watch the great impersonal universe at work again and again, to watch the great personal psyche spar with it, to suffer affliction and weakness and injury, to die and watch those you love die, until the very dizziness of it all becomes a source of compassion for ourselves, and our language, which we alone created, and without which the letter that slipped under the door could never have been written, or, once in a thousand lives - is that too much to ask? - retrieved, and read. Did I mention supreme joy? That is why I read: I want everything to be okay. That’s why I read when I was a lonely kid and that’s why I read now that I’m a scared adult. It’s a sincere desire, but a sincere desire always complicates things - the universe has a peculiar reaction to our sincere desires. Still, I believe the planet on the table, even when wounded and imperfect, fragmented and deprived, is worthy of being called whole. Our minds and the universe - what else is there? Margaret Mead described intellectuals as those who are bored when they don’t have the chance to talk interestingly enough. Now a book will talk interestingly to you. George Steiner describes the intellectual as one who can’t read without a pencil in her hand. One who wants to talk back to the book, not take notes but make them: one who might write 'The giraffe speaks!' in the margin. In our marginal existence, what else is there but this voice within us, this great weirdness we are always leaning forward to listen to?”
Yeah. Yeah!
September 28, 2012
This is my favorite book of 2012, and while the year's not over yet, I am 100% sure that's not going to change.
All of the lectures here are incredibly entertaining, beautiful, and inspiring. They are also often very funny, and sometimes they can be quite sad. Tonally, they share a lot with Ruefle's poetry, so if you like that, you'll certainly like this too.
Before I started the collection, I was expecting that it would be like nearly all the books of non-fiction that poets publish: either a list of what they perceive the rules of poetry to be, or else a very close reading of a handful of poems that are meaningful to them. So often, these books end up feeling like textbooks - sometimes very pleasant and useful ones - but they are seldom the kind of thing that you would read simply for the joy of it. While all the lectures in the book discuss poetry, often poetry is used as a lens through which another subject is examined. In this way, the lectures are a lot like poetry themselves. Reading a lecture on the moon, I learned much more about the moon than I did about poetry.
The individual lectures presented in the collection were all wonderful reads, but part of the fun of the collection was watching Ruefle's voice and ideas evolve over the years. The lectures start out looking and sounding the way that we expect lectures to, but end up becoming more and more fragmentary, both in content and in form. The penultimate lecture in the book is titled "Twenty-Two Short Lectures," and two of these lectures do a great job of encapsulating everything that's wonderful about this collection. Here they are:
Why All of Our Literary Pursuits are Useless
Eighty- five percent of all existing species are beetles and various forms of insects.
English is spoken by only 5 percent of the world's population.
Why There May be Hope
One of the greatest stories ever written is the story of a man who wakes to find himself transformed into a giant beetle.
All of the lectures here are incredibly entertaining, beautiful, and inspiring. They are also often very funny, and sometimes they can be quite sad. Tonally, they share a lot with Ruefle's poetry, so if you like that, you'll certainly like this too.
Before I started the collection, I was expecting that it would be like nearly all the books of non-fiction that poets publish: either a list of what they perceive the rules of poetry to be, or else a very close reading of a handful of poems that are meaningful to them. So often, these books end up feeling like textbooks - sometimes very pleasant and useful ones - but they are seldom the kind of thing that you would read simply for the joy of it. While all the lectures in the book discuss poetry, often poetry is used as a lens through which another subject is examined. In this way, the lectures are a lot like poetry themselves. Reading a lecture on the moon, I learned much more about the moon than I did about poetry.
The individual lectures presented in the collection were all wonderful reads, but part of the fun of the collection was watching Ruefle's voice and ideas evolve over the years. The lectures start out looking and sounding the way that we expect lectures to, but end up becoming more and more fragmentary, both in content and in form. The penultimate lecture in the book is titled "Twenty-Two Short Lectures," and two of these lectures do a great job of encapsulating everything that's wonderful about this collection. Here they are:
Why All of Our Literary Pursuits are Useless
Eighty- five percent of all existing species are beetles and various forms of insects.
English is spoken by only 5 percent of the world's population.
Why There May be Hope
One of the greatest stories ever written is the story of a man who wakes to find himself transformed into a giant beetle.
October 21, 2021
"The greatest lesson in writing I ever had was given to me in an art class. The drawing instructor took a sheet of paper and held up a pencil. She very lightly put the pencil on the piece of paper and applied a little pressure; by bringing up her hand a little ways in one direction, she left a mark upon the paper. 'That's all there is to it,' she said, 'but it's a miracle. Once there was nothing, and now there's a mark.'"
This book is teeming with such profundities.
This book is teeming with such profundities.
September 30, 2013
after it was over, i didn't know what to do with myself so i just started taking pictures of the book on my bathroom floor, a feeble, superficial attempt at capturing whatever it is this book has done to me
April 20, 2017
A series of lectures by poet Mary Ruefle about the components of poetry, the titular Madness, Rack, and Honey of it. Like all good poets she is a reluctant lecturer, and like all good lecturers she explains her topic poetically. This reads as a modern-day Letters to a Young Poet.
April 18, 2013
Every single necessary word!
December 21, 2012
If you married the sharp sensibility, intelligence and humor of Maureen McLane's My Poets with Howard Nemerov's elegant Figures of Thought, you'd get something (at least in my imagination) like Mary Ruefle's Madness, Rack, and Honey. Reufle's new book has been my favorite café reading over the past couple weeks and probably the most fun I've had reading a book since, well, My Poets.
This book is apparently a bunch of lectures. "Lectures for me are bad dreams," she writes, but most of these begin with a pop that merrily echoes her name:
Memory, poetry, lunacy – or madness, rack, and honey.
The book isn't perfect.** Sometimes it's playfully stupid.
The lapses are few and forgivable. At its core is the passion of reading itself. In the chapter with the splendid title "Someone Reading A Book Is A Sign Of Order In The World" (echoes of Wallace Stevens), Ruefle remarks
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* "According to the research of Arnold Ludwig, among all persons of all professions mental disorders appear most among artists. Among all artists, mental disorders appear most among writers. Among all writers, mental disorders appear most among poets." (306)
** The weakest essay, ironically, is "My Emily Dickinson" which echoes not only McLane's book (unintentionally) but (intentionally) the one by Susan Howe. (Maybe I've just had it with Emily Dickinson. And Anne Frank, who's hiding in this essay as well.)
At its worst it includes a Gorey-esque sketch of Emily's trademark white dress; at its best it includes the full citation of "Taking Off Emily's Dickinson's Clothes" by Billy Collins, a poem that makes both of us retch. For Ruefle, the import of the smarmy Collins poem is pretty simple: "Rape: to take away by force."
This book is apparently a bunch of lectures. "Lectures for me are bad dreams," she writes, but most of these begin with a pop that merrily echoes her name:
I don't know where to begin because I have nothing to say, yet I know that before too long I will sound as if I'm on a crusade.The first lecture is entitled "Poetry and the Moon" and it's a beauty. "The moon is the very image of silence," she says, then quotes Simic, "The great lunacy of most lyric poems is that they attempt to use words to convey what cannot be put into words." Which is I suppose the whole point of poems and why poets go crazy.* Toward the end of the book, Ruefle says, "I remember, on the first Tuesday of every year, that I became a poet for a single, simple reason: I liked making similes for the moon." This from a composition in the form of anaphora, which for me recalls Joe Brainard's I Remember, but for Ruefle echoes (these lectures are full of echoes) Philip Larkin's I Remember, I Remember, which concludes "Nothing, like something, happens anywhere."
Nobody wants his grave spray-painted and then vomited on…
I suppose, as a poet, among my fears can be counted the deep-seated uneasiness that one day it will be revealed that I consecrated my life to an imbecility.
Memory, poetry, lunacy – or madness, rack, and honey.
The book isn't perfect.** Sometimes it's playfully stupid.
April is the cruelest month.Really? With so many secrets to tell, I doubt that's The One. Later she writes, "Even a bitter poem is a small act of affirmation." (See Larkin above.)
The secret of poetry is cruelty.
The lapses are few and forgivable. At its core is the passion of reading itself. In the chapter with the splendid title "Someone Reading A Book Is A Sign Of Order In The World" (echoes of Wallace Stevens), Ruefle remarks
In one sense, reading is a waste of time. In another sense, it is a great extension of time, a way for one person to live a thousand and one lives in a single life span, to watch the great impersonal universe at work again and again, to watch the personal psyche spar with it, to suffer affliction and weakness and injury, to die and watch those you love die, until the very dizziness of it all becomes a source of compassion for ourselves, and for the language which we alone created, without which the letter that slipped under the door could never have been written, or, once in a thousand lives — is that too much to ask? — retrieved, and read. Did I mention supreme joy?Yes, Mary, you did – on every page.
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* "According to the research of Arnold Ludwig, among all persons of all professions mental disorders appear most among artists. Among all artists, mental disorders appear most among writers. Among all writers, mental disorders appear most among poets." (306)
** The weakest essay, ironically, is "My Emily Dickinson" which echoes not only McLane's book (unintentionally) but (intentionally) the one by Susan Howe. (Maybe I've just had it with Emily Dickinson. And Anne Frank, who's hiding in this essay as well.)
At its worst it includes a Gorey-esque sketch of Emily's trademark white dress; at its best it includes the full citation of "Taking Off Emily's Dickinson's Clothes" by Billy Collins, a poem that makes both of us retch. For Ruefle, the import of the smarmy Collins poem is pretty simple: "Rape: to take away by force."
October 17, 2021
These lectures are ostensibly about poetry. Ruefle, in introducing them, admits that while her students usually prefer informal talks, she has never been good at extemporizing, so she wrote out her lectures.
What follows, however, aren't really lectures so much as thirty page prose poems that explore poetry just as much as they explore themes of creativity, fear, emotions vs. feelings, existence, hiding, torture, capitalism, art, loneliness vs. solitude, joy, sorrow and the reading life, all with Ruefle's characteristic absurd humor and aching clarity.
This is the kind of book you read stopping every page or so to pound your fingers on the pages at the wit and truth of what she has to say, and your desire to share it with the world.
It's January, but this book will haunt me all year, I know it.
What follows, however, aren't really lectures so much as thirty page prose poems that explore poetry just as much as they explore themes of creativity, fear, emotions vs. feelings, existence, hiding, torture, capitalism, art, loneliness vs. solitude, joy, sorrow and the reading life, all with Ruefle's characteristic absurd humor and aching clarity.
This is the kind of book you read stopping every page or so to pound your fingers on the pages at the wit and truth of what she has to say, and your desire to share it with the world.
It's January, but this book will haunt me all year, I know it.
March 16, 2013
If you crossed Patti Smith (shaman rock 'n roller, poet, writer) with Vladimir Nabokov (in his lecturer guise) with Steven Wright (deadpan comic famous for his one liners) you'd have something sort of close to Mary Ruefle. If you're a writer, this book's for you. And judging by the number of dog-eared pages in my copy, which I've been carrying around for weeks, Madness, Rack and Honey is invaluable.
At Vermont College of Fine Arts, where she teaches poetry, her lectures have been standing room only for years - they are literary seances, hushed and silent as she communes with our writing spirits. If you write, you need to read this book.
At Vermont College of Fine Arts, where she teaches poetry, her lectures have been standing room only for years - they are literary seances, hushed and silent as she communes with our writing spirits. If you write, you need to read this book.
April 24, 2014
'Accidental' lectures written in the space poetry is born. One of the most illuminating things I've read, ever. I will forget 95% of the terrain of this collection within six months, I am sure, but I will never forget the absolute feeling of transportation that lives in this prose, and that will bring me back in a state of blissful having-forgottenness to go it again. If "We are all one question, and the best answer seems to be love--a connection between two things" isn't a thesis for a lifetime, I don't know what is, unless it's "A poem is a finished work of the mind, it is not the work of a finished mind."
March 17, 2013
I love this, especially "On Fear" and "My Emily Dickinson." I still think it is funny that her practical advice to us students, about to write our graduation lectures, was "17-and-a-half pages, double-spaced," and "you can't fail." I guess that means that this sort of genius and courage only needs a form and faith, which is the opposite of what she actually writes in the content of these lectures! But even that discrepancy isn't a real one--- the humor, passion, and wisdom of her work is a beautiful gift.
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