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Post Meridian
Book by Ruefle, Mary
- GenresPoetry
88 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 2000
126 people want to read
About the author
Mary Ruefle
47 books438 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 - 8 of 8 reviews
August 21, 2019
Interesting, but I had hoped for more.
February 11, 2020
It's just a day like any other:
God puts the dead in his cabinet
and polishes off the living.
I uncap the jam and the smell of last summer's
strawberries fills the room...
(something comforting)
...moths/ are too great a subject for one lifetime...
...winter passes, a powdery flounce...
(chilly autumn evenings)
...Sometimes the heart has only a cockle left,
sometimes a daisy will assuage it,
sometimes we must tear them tenderly
and sometimes--like the sudden streak of red
in every painting--madly and gladly rip out their eyes...
(ideology of a daisy)
...Then a moment
when my eyelids flutter
and just when I'm about to fall
a great and unexpected source lifts me up
until I'm standing next to my bed, no longer
a fledgling. My cat comes when I call,
there's milk in the fridge
and the eggs in their crate are cold,
the floor is cold, my dress at the dry cleaners
seems far away, it doesn't seem to belong to me,
something is receding and then I remember
it is the universe flying away from its center,
which could be anywhere. I could be anywhere,
but I'm not. I swell with confidence.
Though noon looks a little frightening
it is still a ways off.
The circle of flame over the stove
is blue and I walk towards it,
picking a thread from my mouth.
(waking)
...My country is a country of snowflakes,
people just pile up to your wonderment
or disgust (whatever you think is OK).
...Everyone wants to live here because we have
invisible fences so if a dog leaves the yard
he's snapped right back in.
You can buy garbage bags with the scent of lemons
or wildflowers. Everyone has a choice...
(snowflakes)
...A stack of mattresses was piled on the sidewalk,
a reminder the next generation would spring
from their satiny tops and feel the pea-sized future.
I covered a gum wrapper with my foot,
destroying all evidence someone was here before me.
The last miserable months of my disastrous life
were spent trying to get a word in edgewise.
(national depression awareness week)
...Happiness makes me tired.
I never meant to be a living exclamation mark,
a bolt of joy hurtling toward the dark mass
of pointed sorrow,
but I sprang in the morning to reach the kettle
before it whistled.
After I've done something useful--
boiled water, taken a shower--
the mirror steams.
The rest of the time I wipe it,
so that slowly, over the years, a procession of faces
has appeared and disappeared...
(before and after)
...lost in your thoughts of how to be speechless
and still give thanks...
(derby)
...That's what
it's like to be human. Everything has a dimension, everything
is an extension. What can you do but turn away, go deeper
into the wilderness area and eat furtively from your basket?
Afterwards I cheered up and came out like a new meaning of
human...
You were wild but we stood
still for each other, and that's what it means to be loved.
(the roo)
God puts the dead in his cabinet
and polishes off the living.
I uncap the jam and the smell of last summer's
strawberries fills the room...
(something comforting)
...moths/ are too great a subject for one lifetime...
...winter passes, a powdery flounce...
(chilly autumn evenings)
...Sometimes the heart has only a cockle left,
sometimes a daisy will assuage it,
sometimes we must tear them tenderly
and sometimes--like the sudden streak of red
in every painting--madly and gladly rip out their eyes...
(ideology of a daisy)
...Then a moment
when my eyelids flutter
and just when I'm about to fall
a great and unexpected source lifts me up
until I'm standing next to my bed, no longer
a fledgling. My cat comes when I call,
there's milk in the fridge
and the eggs in their crate are cold,
the floor is cold, my dress at the dry cleaners
seems far away, it doesn't seem to belong to me,
something is receding and then I remember
it is the universe flying away from its center,
which could be anywhere. I could be anywhere,
but I'm not. I swell with confidence.
Though noon looks a little frightening
it is still a ways off.
The circle of flame over the stove
is blue and I walk towards it,
picking a thread from my mouth.
(waking)
...My country is a country of snowflakes,
people just pile up to your wonderment
or disgust (whatever you think is OK).
...Everyone wants to live here because we have
invisible fences so if a dog leaves the yard
he's snapped right back in.
You can buy garbage bags with the scent of lemons
or wildflowers. Everyone has a choice...
(snowflakes)
...A stack of mattresses was piled on the sidewalk,
a reminder the next generation would spring
from their satiny tops and feel the pea-sized future.
I covered a gum wrapper with my foot,
destroying all evidence someone was here before me.
The last miserable months of my disastrous life
were spent trying to get a word in edgewise.
(national depression awareness week)
...Happiness makes me tired.
I never meant to be a living exclamation mark,
a bolt of joy hurtling toward the dark mass
of pointed sorrow,
but I sprang in the morning to reach the kettle
before it whistled.
After I've done something useful--
boiled water, taken a shower--
the mirror steams.
The rest of the time I wipe it,
so that slowly, over the years, a procession of faces
has appeared and disappeared...
(before and after)
...lost in your thoughts of how to be speechless
and still give thanks...
(derby)
...That's what
it's like to be human. Everything has a dimension, everything
is an extension. What can you do but turn away, go deeper
into the wilderness area and eat furtively from your basket?
Afterwards I cheered up and came out like a new meaning of
human...
You were wild but we stood
still for each other, and that's what it means to be loved.
(the roo)
March 7, 2022
I forget Mary Ruefle wrote for decades before arriving at what I consider to be her signature style. These poems are more prosaic than the Ruefle who was recently a Pulitzer finalist. These poems stay longer than her recent poems, and it allows them to stray further. Ruefle's work hangs together (for me) by style and voice. I am most interested in her way of looking than what she has say (which is not to say I don't love the ways her endings can expand or the occasional concise statements of insight I get from her newer poems). However, here I saw themes emerge in ways I don't necessarily in the newer books of hers I've read. I see the whole book play out against a subtle background of the loss of her mother; I see almost gnostic themes of god's remove from the world and seemingly Eastern themes of an active resignation, a kind of wu wei approach to the world.
June 18, 2022
3.5 stars. I did not love these poems as much as I learned from them — this was my first experience with Ruefle’s poetry (I loved her “Madness, Rack, and Honey”) & I was expecting something a little different.
Mostly, I was impressed by the diction in these poems. After reading this I feel refreshed, and inspired. I’m looking forward to learning more from Ruefle’s work in the future!
Mostly, I was impressed by the diction in these poems. After reading this I feel refreshed, and inspired. I’m looking forward to learning more from Ruefle’s work in the future!
February 2, 2011
I picked up this book of poetry, because I read and loved A Little White Shadow, in which she took an old Victorian manuscript and whited out text to create what she calls erasure (or whiteout) poetry. It was a fascinating way to approach found poetry, which has inspired me to play with the form in my own writing.
Post Meridian is a collection wholly original poetry. It is sometimes heavy as tree branches bowed under the weight of snow, though it is also often playful. Mocking in a kindly way. Poking fun at the ghosts and shadows and day to day terrors that we often take far too seriously.
I enjoyed this book of poetry, though at times there was a disjointed quality, one line encapsulating a thought process that collapses upon another. Sometimes this made it difficult to take the whole poem in as a whole. Though each line in and of itself would be captivating, the entirety of the work assembled could occasionally be somewhat baffling.
Not that poetry has to have clear meaning -- being multilayered as a puzzle box is part of the enjoyment of reading poetry, though I admit that my own enjoyment comes from discovering how each piece fits into the next. The resulting imagery and meaning as perceived by me allows me to (perhaps delusionally) believe that I have tapped into the secret key of the poem and discovered a truth denied to others. Egotistical? Maybe. But I doubt I'm alone in this experience.
The poetry in Post Meridian, however, often denied me this. The pieces did not always neatly fit, and I sometimes felt as though I were standing on the edge of the poem rather than being let in to its secret chambers -- a confounding experience, but not necessarily negative. Perhaps these poems open more wholly to others; perhaps I need merely return to them at another time when I can look at them from an altered perspective. Either way, this is an enjoyable collection of poems that I would definitely recommend.
Post Meridian is a collection wholly original poetry. It is sometimes heavy as tree branches bowed under the weight of snow, though it is also often playful. Mocking in a kindly way. Poking fun at the ghosts and shadows and day to day terrors that we often take far too seriously.
I enjoyed this book of poetry, though at times there was a disjointed quality, one line encapsulating a thought process that collapses upon another. Sometimes this made it difficult to take the whole poem in as a whole. Though each line in and of itself would be captivating, the entirety of the work assembled could occasionally be somewhat baffling.
Not that poetry has to have clear meaning -- being multilayered as a puzzle box is part of the enjoyment of reading poetry, though I admit that my own enjoyment comes from discovering how each piece fits into the next. The resulting imagery and meaning as perceived by me allows me to (perhaps delusionally) believe that I have tapped into the secret key of the poem and discovered a truth denied to others. Egotistical? Maybe. But I doubt I'm alone in this experience.
The poetry in Post Meridian, however, often denied me this. The pieces did not always neatly fit, and I sometimes felt as though I were standing on the edge of the poem rather than being let in to its secret chambers -- a confounding experience, but not necessarily negative. Perhaps these poems open more wholly to others; perhaps I need merely return to them at another time when I can look at them from an altered perspective. Either way, this is an enjoyable collection of poems that I would definitely recommend.
November 4, 2007
an amazing book. The last few poems were my favorites. The one about her+her father sitting in two chairs. And the one about her father forgetting who he lowered the flag for. And the two poems about the little girl. Yeah. Great poet, great poems. There is a darkness to her. An excitement to death. The poem about the crow's wing. yeah.
January 13, 2010
Mary Ruefle has an apporach in this collection that connects humor with the deep qualities of life. Like Charles Simic, she has a wild approach to theme, landscape, and character. Great poems here. A pleasure to read.
February 28, 2009
i'm really digging M. ruefle these days.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews