Cold Pluto

by Mary Ruefle

A reissuing of Cold Pluto, poems by Mary Ruefle.

Genres: Poetry

72 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

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

[Maggie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I of course love Ruefle for her devotion to Tate-like strangeness, surprising adjectival combinations, and astonished endings that swing open, wide. This book was a lovely combination of strange-making, image-building, and Ruefle's lovely idiosyncratic imagination.

[Pat Settegast · Rating 4 out of 5]

Many of these poems maintain a tension between objective perception and a lyrical retelling of history. The register twists and turns between religious fever and a cold sense of humor. On the whole the writing is concise and quiet, trending toward a self-awareness visa vi poetry as object, punctuation simile (ie comparing clouds to umlauts), and a decidedly academic slant of subject matter. I also think she is a little (just a little) schizophrenic.

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm torn between "it was amazing," and "really liked it." Mary Ruefle's poems are a perfect mixture of endearing comedy and ground shaking sadness- if there can be a perfect mixture of this, she has found it, claimed it and made it her own. I have felt this way about some of her other books also, but it really comes to the surface in this one.

[Bradley Harrison · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The best thing that ever happened to me / was that my grandparents all died / before I was born. / I've never had a sense of who I am, / and in that regard I've been lucky."



an excerpt from, "Ancestors"








God I love Mary Ruefle.

[Jay · Rating 5 out of 5]

Full of feeling and knowledge about feeling...

[Brandy Shark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everything that she writes is gold. Simple as that.