Ruin

by Cynthia Cruz

Reader, take heed: These are no ordinary poems about childhood. In a series of secular prayers, Cynthia Cruz alludes to a girlhood colored by abuse and a brother’s death. A beautifully understated sense of menace and damage pervades this vivid, nonlinear tale.

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2006

About the author

Cynthia Cruz is the author of Ruin (Alice James Books) as well as The Glimmering Room, Wunderkammer and How the End Begins (all from Four Way Books). She is the recipient of fellowships from Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, and a Hodder Fellowship. An essayist and art writer, her first collection of essays, Notes Toward a New Language is forthcoming. She teaches at Sarah Lawrence College and is currently a doctoral student in Germanic Language and Literature.

Reviews

[iana · Rating 2 out of 5]

this was mostly the same thing over and over again. it also sort of just drops the reader in the middle of something, & I felt like I didn't understand what was happening until a little later when it took time to put aside some heavy obscurity.

[Richard S · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderful first book of poetry.

[Sandy Longhorn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ruin by Cynthia Cruz is a book I first requested through ILL last fall. After I'd read just the first few poems, I knew it was a book I needed to own. This second read through proved that buying the book was the right choice. After I'd read the book once, I turned to the back cover to learn more about Cruz and also happened to read the blurbs. Blurbs don't usually influence me to read a book, but these two really do capture the book well. "This is not a book about peacocks in twilight nor should it be read in the parlor," begins Thomas Lux. And Reginald Shepherd writes of the "landscape of fates and fatal hungers, nightmares and dangerous desires, in which enchantment and terror are so intimate that they become one." These blurbs are nearly poems themselves and apt descriptors of a book with a main theme of ruin and destruction.

Nearly all of the poems in Cruz' collection contain a first-person speaker, and that speaker emerges out of the reality of a working-class family with an alcoholic mother and a brother who ends up dead due to some kind of gun violence. In fact, as I read the poems, I was reminded thematically of Beth Bachmann's Temper. Cruz' book threads through the destruction of a nuclear family, although there is even more mystery in the narrative than there was in Bachmann's book.

Common images throughout the book include: horses, death, destruction, falcons, guns, a boat, the speaker hiding, and weeds, to name a few. Given that the poems are all compact bursts of language, I appreciated the weaving of key images throughout. In an interview for Poems Out Loud, Cruz states that when she writes she is "trying to make musical-language machines out of beauty and pain." I have to say, she succeeds in doing so!

[Patch]

I'm really not sure, there were a few poems I really liked, the last one in particular comes to mind. I really liked The symbolic language and imagery but it felt a bit limited, the same metaphors got reused so much it makes me wonder if it was intentional, which makes me hesitant to judge it for that. I think this might be one where I'd have to read more of the authors work to get a sense of what she was going for.

[e · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked this up at Mckays with no prior knowledge of Cynthia Cruz and she is now my ABSOLUTE favorite.
This is so vulnerable and honest, I was ruined with the turn of each page and was so deeply touched that I cried my way through most of it.
Immediately went online to purchase all of her poetry collections.

[amanda abel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Honestly finished this thinking seriously? How have I not read her sooner? And a little angry because of it. And let me be honest: I felt that way as soon as I read the first poem. This came out 17 years ago, and I got lucky at some point recently because someone posted a poem of hers and I read it and loved it and found this to order. Anyway, addressing some of the criticism over the content: yes, there is some repetition in this collection, but it is not the same poem over and over. It is the same poet struggling with the same moments and same demons, trying to write her way to understanding. It is hard, and it is beautiful, and I was glad to witness that terrible working through. I am immediately going to seek out more from Cruz and see what she’s done in the years since. What a gift.

[Holly · Rating 2 out of 5]

I loved Wunderkammer, the first book I read by Cruz, so much that I bought all her other books.

But I didn't care for this at all. It was like the same damn two or three poems over and over, and they got more and more annoying as the book went on.

Had this been the first book by Cruz I read, I would not have read another.

[Joey · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I spent a lifetime inside the destruction.
And like anyone, I made a world someplace else."

A haunting set of evocative, psychedelic poetry. At first, the poems seem unrelated, but as Cruz continues along she constructs a working set of reoccurring images, themes, and characters that results in a cohesive collection. Loved this haunting little book.

[Allison · Rating 3 out of 5]

A student just handed this to me at the beginning of class and I devoured it while they worked on an assignment. I'm giving it back to her right now, but I will definitely go back to this later, when I can, to pour over it some more.

[Nicholas Rombes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Man, I'm just surprised Cruz isn't more well known. Maybe she is, just not in my circles. What a beautiful hellscape she paints here, with so few words. Like a bat flitting against a night sky, just glimpses, but what glimpses they are.

[kiwi · Rating 5 out of 5]

i have nothing to say. i am the ruin.

[Tai · Rating 4 out of 5]

enchanting w/ lines that took my breath away

[Benjamin Niespodziany · Rating 5 out of 5]

A display of a heavy childhood cascaded by magic, mountain, imagination, escape, and woodland wonder. Twisted fairy tales equal parts eulogy and prayer.

[Erin Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite collections from my favorite poet!

[Andy McCarthy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Her poerty is so honest and accessible.

[Sara Cunningham · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ok, ruin me.

[Susan Jean Cronin · Rating 3 out of 5]

These poems are quick, mysterious, and intense. The book does not constitute a series as such, but the poems are clearly of a piece. The best poems here fearlessly attack questions of grief, loss, and possible family secrets, the mind behind them alternately turning them over and over and trying to run away from the answers. However, they can seem a bit repetitive, and sometimes key images come back in ways that seem to muddle rather than illuminate what they might mean.

[Ana · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't have enough stars for this book. I read it in two brief sittings and now I want to shout it from the rooftops, but it's too cold out. A great example of a poetry that defies categorization: I dare you to label it. Actually, no, don't do it. The images are so visceral and "on" that the poems give the impression they were written in a trance, were the language not wrought with such precision and vision. A clear midnight torrent. Can't wait for her next.

[Keith · Rating 5 out of 5]

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/audi... The poem "Sparks, Nevada" sold me on this poet and this collection. There are narratives here that are incomplete, yet it's possible to follow the speakers. It's sort of like a dream where the scenes jump from one to another making an intuitive sort of sense.

8/11/2025
Second reading - I continue to love how the narratives and tones weave throughout the poems collected here. Ruin has a surreal collage effect which I admire.

[Amber manning-harris · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fresh take on poetry, feral and intrusive, Cruz puts her work out there for all to see. I am anxiously awaiting the next book of poems.

[Thom Dunn]

NOT A REVIEW} Included NEBQ, # 1808, 10-3-2010.

[Diann Blakely]

Ruin and ravage and danger lurk at the margins of every poem in this ominous, compelling, and too-little-known book.

[Jean Callahan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Can't wait for her second book, which is coming out fall 2012.

[Rodney · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hard as nails. I keep thinking about it.

[Milo R. · Rating 5 out of 5]

incredible incredible incredible.

"What I recall most of that overdose
Is the gorgeous white underworld
Galloping into me."
- from "Through the Night, Softly"

[Jordan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good. A little dramatic, which made me skeptical. But Good. I enjoyed it.