The Most of It

by Mary Ruefle

“[Mary] Ruefle . . . brings us an often unnerving, but always fresh and exhilarating view of our common experience of the world.”—Charles Simic

Fans of Lydia Davis and Miranda July will delight in this short prose from a beloved and cutting-edge poet. Here are thirty stories that deliver the soft touch and the sucker punch with stunning aplomb. Ducks, physicists, detectives, and The New York Times all make appearances.

From “The Dart and the Drill”:

I do not believe that when my brother pierced my skull with a succession of darts thrown from across our paneled rec room on the night of November 18th in my sixth year on earth, he was trying to transcend the notions of time and space as contained and protected by the human skull. But who can fathom the complexities of the human brain? Ten years later—this would have been in 1967—the New York Times reported a twenty-four year old man, who held an honor degree in law, died in the process of using a dentist’s drill on his own skull, positioned an inch above his right ear, in an attempt to prove that time and space could be conquered . . .

Mary Ruefle’s poems and prose have appeared in Harper’s Magazine, The Best American Poetry, and The Next American Essay. Her many awards include NEA and Guggenheim fellowships. She is a frequent visiting professor at the University of Iowa, and she lives and teaches in Vermont.

Genres: Poetry, Short Stories, Fiction, Essays

96 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2008

About the author

Mary 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-...

Reviews

[W.B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mary Ruefle is THE poet of the improbable, the impossible and the impish. To know her is to love her--and to be weirded out by her on numerous occasions. I mean that as a great compliment. It takes a lot to weird readers out today. We've been some really weird places thanks to recent cinema and the current leanings of television programmers.

And yet there is that OTHER weirdness, what the surrealists called le merveilleux, because it is marvelous, which lifts one's spirit outside of life's mainframe of normalcy for a few moments, makes everything suddenly scintillate. Those are the moments Mary Ruefle specializes in.

And this collection of prose poems (or are some of them short fiction?)has it in spades. Many of these prose poems or short stories are extremely funny, like the diary she kept for over a month, where she simply studied every bird with with she came in contact. Here are some sample entries: "Aug 26: They come for breakfast and they come for dinner. WHERE DO THEY GO FOR LUNCH?" "Sept 4: I would look it up in a book, but it is a sin to look up that which you love in a book." "Sept 18: Although all poets aspire to be birds, no bird aspires to be a poet."

Eccentric, not grease, is the word for these little parables. In "A Certain Swirl" she meditates on the plight of a sentence left abandoned on a blackboard. The opening piece, "Snow," is a classic and will probably be anthologized long after the poet has been recycled by nature. The first two sentences of this prose poem or short piece of fiction are "Every time it starts to snow I wold like to have sex. No matter if it is snowing lightly and unseriously, or snowing very seriously, well on into the night, I would like to stop whatever manifestation of life I am engaged in and have sex, with the same person, who also sees the snow and heeds it, who might have to leave an office or a meeting, or some arduous physical task, or conceivably, leave off having sex with another person, and go in the snow to me, who is already, in the snow, beginning to have sex in my snow-mind." And it just gets better from there.

The author's mind has a metaphysical bent, so many of these stories end up coming off as having been written by a person who is a strange melange of the Steve Martin of Cruel Shoes and the Wittgenstein of the Tractatus. Some times there are even glimpses of Joe Brainard's candid sensibility, especially in the many, lightly-toasted mini-essays of "A Half-Sketched Head."

I can't recommend this book highly enough if you like the odd perception and the beautiful sentence. Because Ruefle delivers both up with all the unpretentiousness and friendliness of a waitress who knows she has the winning Lotto ticket in her pocket, but is going to take your order just the same before walking out the door. Because she believes it's funny to flatter form. Even if she knows what a crock form really is.

[Kaya · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars (rounded down)

An incredibly original and delightful 92 pages. Some parts read like my own thoughts and others went completely over my head. The drastic fluctuation between feeling so connected and then unexpectedly lost was dizzying. Regardless of this seesaw effect, I look forward to reading more of Mary Ruefle’s work and will likely return to this book at a later time in my life with hopes that it will resonate differently.

[M. Sarki · Rating 2 out of 5]

http://msarki.tumblr.com/post/1500253...

After recently listening to a couple of podcasts this past summer featuring Mary Ruefle I decided to give her poetry a try. For the record I confess to initially being more interested in her collected lectures Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures. But in my predictively addictive newfound curiosity in an attractive writer near my own age, whose clear and comforting voice sounded like Patti Smith to me, and who seemed to have a grasp on what I feel most important in the writing I read, I instead decided to try these little prose pieces collected in The Most of It as I waited for a more affordable copy of her revered lectures to come my way. But what began as an exciting delight in reading her short prose slowly turned into boredom, and then, almost abruptly, her lines took a left turn and morphed into indifference. I felt completely hornswoggled. And I should have known better than to have purchased this book anyway when the publishing promo proudly stated: Fans of Lydia Davis and Miranda July will delight in this short prose from a beloved and cutting-edge poet. The book proved to be severely lacking in everything but burdensome disappointment. Mary Ruefle teaches writing. She has the credentials to prove it. And she should demand much better of herself. I was woefully surprised.

[Carlene Kucharczyk · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everything I want.

[Georgia Cloepfil · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although all poets aspire to be birds, no bird aspires to be a poet.

[Thomas Mackell · Rating 5 out of 5]

beautiful, raw, dream-like prose poetry. seems simple and as evocative as a dream but also could have deeper philosopical meaning when meditated on for longer. can also be breezed through just to enjoy the imagery and ideas.

[hope h. · Rating 4 out of 5]

mary ruefle you've done it again!! put me down as officially obsessed with everything she's ever written - and i haven't even gotten to a collection of her actual poetry yet, but her style of prose poetry/mini essays has been completely blowing me away

suburb of long suffering

fire is my companion, but i do not talk to it, it talks to me. it has white-hot fissures that quiver and rage and complain and sometimes very tender speech towards morning, a low blue word or two. i never tire of listening to my fire. music is my companion also, but it does not talk to me, i talk to it, i talk to it and it listens without complaint, absorbing whatever i am feeling and i can feel it listening to me. i think it never tires of listening to me. together, the fire and the music and me, we make a family that, despite its dysfunction, is able to persevere. yet i have a complaint. when they are in the room together, the fire and the music, they talk to each other and neither do they talk nor listen to me, as for example on a rainy day when the three of us come into the room together to while away the time: the fire and the music begin to converse in soft tones at first, so as not to disturb me i like to think, but soon their conversation grows to such a pitch that between the two of them there seem to be a great many unspoken agreements, while i am left feeling lonelier and lonelier, and end up by the window, a mere eavesdropper in my own home.

[also: camp william, my pet, my clock, beautiful day, ascribed this day to the affidavit, the diary, and my search among the birds(my personal favorite.)]

also: this is my 100th book of the year! imagine here that i am cheering and setting off firecrackers

[Eva-Stina]

Sept 1 Early this morning a cardinal appears out of nowhere, looking like Santa Claus.

[...]

My French fries are eaten by the medium heartbroken dove.

Is there anything sadder than the sight of a medium heartbroken dove stuffed with French fries on Christmas morning?

Sept 2 Is there anything better, more beautiful, in all the world, across all the lands, over the Taj Mahal and everything, than two pigeons, ten wrens, a cardinal, and a medium heartbroken dove come to Ohio, to an asphalt roof, to eat potatoes on the day AFTER Christmas?

---

LARGE, SAD NUMBERS

Which number is greater — the number of poems collected and preserved by man, or the number of poems thrown away by the women who wrote them? And if the lesser poems outnumber the greater poems, consider this: is it sadder to read such poems or to write them?

[Frances King · Rating 5 out of 5]

somehow mary ruefle has nuzzled her way into my heart, soul, mind. her words read like my thoughts and she has revealed that writing can be some clever and profound combination of essay, poetry, prose, and autobiography. talk about how chlorine makes you think of simple swimming in hotel pools with your family, how the snow makes you eager to have sex, how the sculpture you saw as a kid in that museum that one time changed your mind about a few things along the way. when was the last time i scraped my knee? i don’t know. i’d just like to meet mary and say thank you, over and over

[kelly]

"I want to remember the quiet, cold, gentle sleepers who cannot think of themselves as birds nestled in feathers, but who are themselves, in part, part of the snow, which is falling with such steadfast devotion to the ground all the anxiety in the world seems gone, the world seems deep in a bed as I am deep in a bed, lost in the arms of my lover, yes, when it snows like this I feel the whole world has joined me in isolation and silence."

[Castles · Rating 5 out of 5]

From the first sentence of this book you realize Ruefle is a great writer. Fresh, original and bold.

[H · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Although all poets aspire to be birds, no bird aspires to be a poet."

[Marc Nash · Rating 3 out of 5]

Video review https://youtu.be/CrU3no080lg

[Dan Butterfass · Rating 5 out of 5]

It wasn't until reaching page 61 and reading the title passage, The Most Of It, that it spontaneously dawned on me exactly which book this book of prose passages, of vignettes, was strongly resonant of the whole time I was more and more falling head over heels in love with this book as I read it. While reading the last, long and marvelous section, A Half-Sketched Head, I was truly hooked. It's brilliant, highly entertaining, provocative stuff, dealing with the narrator, Mary's, retreat with an anchorite, who is one of the most interesting characters I've ever encountered in American Literature. Who knows? Maybe Ruefle made him up entirely?

Up until that point on page 61 I was drawing some comparison between this book and Rilke's sincere and beautiful prose poem passages that are so often excerpted from his autobiographical novel, and only prose work, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. Yet Mary Ruefle's own "first book of prose" - made of fairly discreet yet loosely connected passages - is more comic in tone than Rilke's passages - it is somewhat like reading Rilke's but not at all like reading Rilke's passages except reading Ruefle would be somewhat similar to reading Rilke's if Rilke had had her sense of humor. Which is to say nothing more than Ruefle - at least on paper - has a more developed and deeper and a more peculiar sense of humor than Rilke. But to categorize this as an essentially "comic" work would not be right. Perhaps a better way to describe these passages as a whole would be to say that it is a deadly serious work, but one that also often revels in an uncanny sense of wit and humor about fairly serious matters, such as poets' tendency toward suicide. So this is an unflinching as well as humorous book.

Though some readers will be tempted to call this a book of "prose poems" it really is a book of prose which quite often approaches and meets the conditions of poetry. Maybe "paragraphs" - which is what "prose poems" use to be called - would be putting a more apt name to the genre in which Ruefle appears to be writing, as hers resurrect something of that old-fashioned spirit of the "paragraph" - its cheeky humor, for one; its philosophical bent, for another; it's imaginative inventiveness, for a third. (But I doubt Mary Ruelfe would care a whit about such arguments, finding them rather pedantic.) But then there is a continuity of character throughout, and the connectedness of scenes from the protagnist's childhood, and emergence of bit characters such her mum and dad, and an overall sense of interelatedness that make this book more than a series of "paragraphs", in the old sense.

While most books fall short of being original within a definable genre, this book's originality stems at least in part from its seamless blurring and blending of elements of many genres - prose, poetry, the prose-poem, paragraphs, (and to a lesser but still apparent extent) the short story, diary and journal entry, the (handwritten) letter and essay. But that would all be for naught if the content and style of her writing were not interesting and original, too. It is an intuitive, at times emotionally raw, and very polished book of novella-like yet plot-less prose passages.

Who are some of the influences, or forerunners, to such work? Gertrude Stein and her theory and practice of insistence (repetition of words or a phrase with poetic variation within a paragraph), which greatly influenced the early style of Hemingway, come immediately to mind. And of course there is Rilke. Which is to say that in this book Mary Ruefle is a poet who is also a "prose stylist" of a high order, and who like all prose stylists of a high order (e.g. Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Flannery O'Connor, Capote, Thomas McGuane, McCarthy and etc.) is really a poet whose poetry is written as prose.

But on page 61 as I was reading the title passage, The Most Of It, I suddenly felt a keen resonance, a spirit of kinship, between this book and Richard Brautigan's short and captivating novel, Trout Fishing in America, which is also made of discreet yet interrelated passages. In that book Brautigan, of course, is a very fine prose stylist, too. And like that book, The Most of It, feels like a small masterpiece that’s at once sensitive and quirky, irreverent, wry and worldy, full of hidden depths, pathos, pith and jest. The overall spell it cast over me was one of a clear-minded delirium that I didn't want to end.

Any book of literature that has a solid chance to gain a slow but steady "cult" following and become a “cult classic” is likely a remarkable achievement in this time of fractured attention spans, so glutted with books.

[Hibou le Literature Supporter · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Why is it we speak of unreliable narrators, but not of unreliable readers?" This collection of prose poems absolutely altered my brain: the jumps of logic, humor, directness, and most of all, her many philosophies. Looking forward to reading much more Ruefle.

[Sienna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mary Ruefle blew me away when she came to Wellington last month. She acknowledged that it's both a blessing and a curse to be a talented speaker (especially one reminiscent of the log lady), but I have to confess that I only half-believed her when she said it could render irrelevant the quality of the poetry she read — Ruefle's live presence wouldn't be nearly so potent if she didn't have such a remarkable way with words, with ideas, with the gossamer thread of meaning that links them.

These short prose pieces strike the perfect balance between observation and insight, humor and profundity. I laughed out loud, broke my cardinal rule against dog-earring books, read passages to my husband in bed. (He listened politely and chuckled where appropriate though I think he was keen to return to his own book.) They succeed to varying degrees. My two favorites — the two that made my heart ache even as my mouth formed an involuntary smile — are "A Minor Personal Matter" and "My Search Among the Birds." Sorrow, thy name is sparrow.

[Ryan Harris · Rating 4 out of 5]

If someone asked me to remember my first menses — for what woman can forget it? — I would remember the afternoon in the dressing room off of the ballet studio, where I was one of twelve disciples in pink and black who had just been whipped to a frenzy in front of a mirror by a Russian voice, and the low bench where I sat undoing my toe shoes, unwinding their long ribbons from around my ankles, mysteriously feeling that my unseen toes had been crushed in a new way, a way that ushered in the idea that love could be greater than pain, devotion could withstand the greatest barbarity, and I was one who could bear it. That wad of lamb's wool stuffed in the blunt end of each shoe was indeed blood-soaked, it was wet, it was red, and yet already turning a dark and troubling purple.

I take a week off the gym as I can tell when my body needs to rest. Time to heal all those strained fibres which I’d torn and shred to get so high so often. I missed my fellow trainers and the voice of the instructor. But now I’m back wearing black and blue, feeling stronger, ready to go harder.

*

Every time it starts to snow, I would like to have sex. No matter if it is snowing lightly and unseriously, or snowing very seriously, well on into the night, I would like to stop whatever manifestation of life I am engaged in and have sex, with the same person, who also sees the snow and heeds it, who might have to leave an office or meeting, or some arduous physical task, or, conceivably, leave off having sex with another person, and go in the snow to me, who is already, in the snow, beginning to have sex in my snow-mind. Someone for whom, like me, this is an ultimatum, the snow sign, an ultimatum of joy, though as an ultimatum beyond joy as well as sorrow.
[…]
although I will be having sex while it snows I want to remember the quiet, cold, gentle sleepers who cannot think of themselves as birds nestled in feathers, but who are themselves, in part, part of the snow, which is falling with such steadfast devotion to the ground all the anxiety in the world seems gone, the world seems deep in a bed as I am deep in a bed, lost in the arms of my lover, yes, when it snows like this I feel the whole world has joined me in isolation and silence.

All these white flowers in spring make me think about wanting sex. I stop and rise to smell a hedge of orange jasmine on my way home and get so lost in its scent that I almost fall into some petunias. I keep telling everyone how filled with joy and optimism I feel simply because it’s warm outside.

But then I wonder when was the last time I had sex and I realise it was exactly two years ago and before that another five. I feel ashamed, as if I have committed a crime against my youth or caged a lyrebird.

I forget what sex is like. I remember she was an excellent kisser and strikingly soft. But something felt off so we shook hands and I went home to watch the rain fall for another year or two. But now that it’s spring I wonder what that orange jasmine smells like again.

*

I needed to open the refrigerator — the water I wanted was there, sitting inside a glass pitcher on the uppermost grill, cold and clear and perfectly suited to my thirst. But I was afraid of the light, the light that went on whenever I opened the door, or the light that was always on — it was hard to tell — and I was more afraid of the light than I wanted the water. Still, my desire for the water was so strong I sometimes put my hand on the door, preparing, in my mind, to open the door more quickly than the light could respond to the door being opened, and sometimes I tried a completely spontaneous approach, believing if I opened the door very quickly, without thinking of either the water or the light, and most of all without thinking of opening the door (while I was opening it), I might be able to overcome the light, my fear, like most fear, being predicated on premeditation, but when this didn't work I entertained the very reasonable idea of waiting until the source of the light — the lightbulb — burned itself out, as was inevitable, though how this could happen if I didn't open the door once in all those years was a problem, compounded by the very real possibility of my dying of thirst while I waited. To use the light again and again seemed to be my only recourse if I wanted to burn the light out, and as it happened I opened the door again and again, but now I was more intent on the light than I was on the water, and forgot to drink altogether as I stood in the kitchen in my stocking feet in front of the refrigerator, opening and closing the door in rapid succession, driven by dehydration and fear to take risks that led me deeper and deeper into crisis.

Fuck it, it’s just a coffee. I’ve got better at not overthinking things because I know now what that stupid phrase means which is to think beyond the next step before even taking it. I have so many coffees each week with old friends and new it’s practically all I do. This is no different except the last time they messaged me was years ago to cancel a date because they had gotten serious with someone else. I delighted in bumping into them in the lift because those are my favourite situations and fuck yeah I’ll lean into it. Oh my god, hi, what are you doing here. Pleasantries, pleasantries. But then they say they’d like to know more about my work and in truth so too me about theirs. So why not reach out? Because context you idiot. I promised myself I’d stop doing this but it’s so me, it’s what I do and I like it when others do it for me in the right way but often I’m just I’m sitting there and they join me and someone brings us over water and coffee. But in this context I’m more like a fox that approaches and scampers when trying to snatch some lunch. Oh thank god they don’t reply, until they do and yeah let’s do coffee, fuck it.

*

Whatever habit one is most faithful to—whatever one does most, loves best, is their religion. A simple matter of precedence.

[Marina Ruby · Rating 5 out of 5]

For a book labeled as prose, it is in fact overwhelming poetic. Mary Ruefle even confesses to having written poetry before, and the influence of that past is clear in each page.

It's an unflinching look at daily life. The things taken for mundane, from feeding birds or buying benches, are written through a thoughtful, precise eye that revels the deeper intimacies of these small events. Something as simple as craving a glass of water is thrust into a more serious, but surreal, narrative that will leave a reader looking around their home and life with more consideration if only for a moment.

Melancholic, frighting, witty, and fantastical, 'The Most of It' is a book that should be read and kept close.

[Nicola · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thoroughly enjoyed this delightful book. Her flights of fancy and thought are idiosyncratic, endearing, and insightful. It might be tempting to belittle this small, associative, lyric book-it doesn't overtly take on the big themes and tropes of literature. But Ruefle isn't interested in the big, she's interested in the small, everyday, and particular. And this lack of pretension, this naivety, this deepening of the identifiable, allows the big-our perceptions and perspectives and stitching of the world around us-to enter in the work more playfully and organically. Enjoy the ride!

[Tara Flint Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mary Ruefle is one of the most brilliant and clever and extraordinary writers. When you hear her give a reading, you are in a dream where everything makes perfect sense and nothing makes any sense and you walk away feeling like someone has been singing you a lullaby that only later, hours or years later, will you fully understand the meaning. Her book, in my hands, is one of life's greatest delights. Read in wonderment.

[Jen Maidenberg · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really enjoy Mary Ruefle. Madness Rack and Honey is one of my all time favorite reads of late, definitely tops my favorite books of essays. But The Most of It didn't keep my attention as much. Half of the essays were meaningful to me and some were laugh out loud funny (The Taking of Moundville by Zoom) in the silly, "is she in my private thoughts" sorta way. I definitely recommend this to skim or pick up and put down. But I wouldn't say this is THE Mary Ruefle to read.

[Hans · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this collection. I feel like I need to buy 3-4 copies to start distributing to people...while adding a copy to my shelves. Humor, brilliance, imagination. I will be reading a lot more of Mary Ruefle. A few favorites: The Diary, The Most of It, The Taking of Moundsville by Zoom. There is something startling on almost every page. Damn!

[John Woodington · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ruefle ignores the things that make great literature great (compelling characters, plot, style, prose, punctuation) and leaves us with this abdication from all that is good for the sake of artistic experimentation. She should've thrown these writing exercises in the "never-show-this-crap-to-anyone" file drawer.

[Mia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Travesty to say this, I know. I'd delighted in many of these lyric essays (prose poems? "pieces") when read here and there before. ("Monument" !!! for example. So wonderfully uncommon.) But somehow, collected, they begin to feel clever, and the shapes and surfaces rote.

[J.A. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mary Ruefle's first book of prose was my first reading of Mary Ruefle, and it was delightful. Very Lydia Davis, very Miranda July, very droll yet often openly sentimental. Excited to read her poetry next.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book of prose poems or "pieces" or whatever you want to call them. It's my favorite book by Mary Ruefle, and "The Monument" is one of the best.

[Samantha · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was truly fantastic. I had read it for my contemporary fiction class, and I fell in love with its beautiful poetry-like prose. Truly recommend it.

[Scott]

I loved this.

[Kelli Trapnell · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book teaches you how to notice and how to write. Necessary.

[dc · Rating 5 out of 5]

some people just use words better than 99% of humanity.