Apparition Hill

by Mary Ruefle

Mary Ruefle is an observer who seeks to bring sense and order to her world. This is a world that can span continents and centuries, but in each. the poem is defined by where she is at that moment. Many of the poems in Apparition Hill were written in or about China, and Ruefle brings an eye for the universal to what she finds in the exotic, as she transcends both time and geography.

Genres: Poetry

70 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2001

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

[Jesica · Rating 3 out of 5]

Notable poems : Instrument of the Highest, Continua and Dove

[Emily · Rating 2 out of 5]

Idk, I just found this weird and even considering the time context just could not get over the orientalism.

[Dan Butterfass · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book of poems that was the novelistic equivalent of a true page-turner to read - this book took me by surpise in that it was utterly enjoyable and a breeze to read. I started and finished it in the same sitting, and two hours later was still as energized by the poems as when I began reading. The book actually gained considerable energy and momemtum as it went on, so much so that 70 pages later I came away from this book still wanting more.

For me Ruefle's work is a kind of strange and wonderful hybrid of something akin to the explosive comic sense of Gilda Radner, the absurdist tragi-comic sensibility of Samuel Beckett (who seems to me an oblique yet real influence throughout her entire body of work), the lyrical gift of Keats or Dickinson, the imagism of Tu Fu or Li Po, the wildness of Ashberry, and the deep playfulness of a serious language poet whose work lies almost entirely outside that genre.

Which is to say, verily, that she overflows with (rather than contains) multitudes.

I used to be discomfited by not being able to find my center of gravity while reading Ruefle - as if I wasn't able to keep from losing my balance - but now I realize that there are a multitude of gravitational centers in her work, each one to be appreciated and savored for its own fierce or gentle pull, push, tug, shove, or gut-punch - its own peculiar vertigo:

PERFECT EXAMPLE

O my friend, your imponderabilia
frightens me. The moon is beclouded
and still whitens the night.
You must believe me when I tell you
it makes no difference that
Armstrong walked on its chalk.
You must not drink too much
or you will forget her gleam
is upon us. It is as though
a severed head rolled in
and stopped at your feet....

Mary Reufle's work always confirms for me one really important thing about the mystery of individual consciousness: That given the choice, it's truly impossible to want to be someone other than ourselves. What I'm getting at is that no one - not even a middling playright - would in the end choose to be Shakespeare even if he or she could choose to be Shakespeare. What's truly enjoyable is to see the world with new eyes(if not fall in love with the world all over) with the help of another's consciousness, especially one that enlarges and augments our own.

Mary Ruefle must be among the ten or twenty essential poets writing in English today.

[Albert · Rating 4 out of 5]

A leapily written book on a number of ideas, but primarily about how memory gets warped over time versus the potency of direct experience. Ruefle has an easy going vernacular style with great images.

Thank you!