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Mary Ruefle Biography

Mary Ruefle (born 1952) is an American poet, essayist, and professor. She has published eleven collections of poetry, most recently, My Private Property (Wave Books, 2016). Ruefle's debut collection of prose, The Most Of It, appeared in 2008 and her collected lectures, Madness, Rack, and Honey, was published in August 2012, both published by Wave Books.

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Mary Ruefle Quotes

In the end I would rather wonder than know

Ends, Know, Knows, Wonder

I remember being so young I thought all artists were famous.

Artist, Artists, Remember, Thought, Youth

in the beginning William Shakespeare was a baby, and knew absolutely nothing. He couldn't even speak.

Absolutely Nothing, Baby, Shakespeare, Speak

the wasting of time is the most personal, most private, most intimate form of conversation with oneself, as well as with another.

Time, Leisure, Intimate, Wasting, Personal

[On filling out a grant application:] I seek an extended period of time, free from all distractions, so that I might be free to be distracted.

Distraction, Extended, Free, Might, Period, Time

Poetry is sentimental to begin with. To write a sentimental poem is an act of redundancy.

Poetry, Poetry Is, Redundancy, Sentimental, Writing

When I first encountered the poems of Jon Woodward, I was stunned into the state that is my life's joy-I was in the presence of the inimitable. Uncanny Valley extends that experience-almost into another dimension. These apocalyptic, pixilated poems forge a mythology of our ravaged culture, one that might have been written in the future. If you want poetry to give you a persimmon on a plate, look elsewhere; if you want to know what happens when seven trees fall on the highway and the story is told by a stutterer, this is the book, and it could only have been written by Woodward.

Book, Fall, Give, Giving, Mythology, Poems

The industrial world destroys nature not because it doesn’t love it but because it is not afraid of it.

Afraid, Destroys, Nature, Not Afraid, World

It is the first experience you ever had of reading a decent poem: 'Oh, somebody else is lonely, too!

Lonely, Reading, Firsts, Decent, Somebody

Metaphor is not, and never has been, a mere literary term. It is an event.

Events, Literary, Mere, Metaphor, Term

The words secret and sacred are siblings.

Sacred, Secret, Sibling, Words

My happiness is marred only by my failure to attain it.

Attain, Failure, Happiness, Marred

I'm lucky enough to occasionally be able to do something I love - write poems - and unlucky enough that what I love confuses and overwhelms me.

Able, Confuses, Lucky, Write, Writing

The origins of poetry are clearly rooted in obscurity, in secretiveness, in incantation, in spells that must at once invoke and protect, tell the secret and keep it.

Obscurity, Poetry, Protect, Secret

I study nature so as not to do foolish things.

Foolish, Nature, Study, Things

We are all one question, and the best answer seems to be love—a connection between things.

Answer, Answers, Connections, Question, Seems, Things

If we knew the value of suffering, we would ask for it.

Ask, Asks, Ifs, Suffering, Value

I am convinced that the first lyric poem was written at night, and that the moon was witness to the event and that the event was witness to the moon. For me, the moon has always been the very embodiment of lyric poetry.

Lyric Poetry, Moon, Night, Poem, Poetry

If you have any idea for a poem, an exact grid of intent, you are on the wrong path, a dead-end alley, at the top of a cliff you haven't even climbed. This is a lesson that can only be learned by trial and error.

Climbed, Errors, Ideas, Path, Trial And Error, Wrong

I remember I was a child, and when I grew up I was a poet. It all happened at sixty miles an hour and on days when the clock stopped and all of humanity fit into a little chapel, into a pinecone, a shot of ouzo, a snail's shell, a piece of soggy rye on the pavement.

Children, Humanity, Pavement, Shot, Pinecone, Stopped

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