Publisher's Synopsis
"We emerge from these poems, scathed and awakened."Poetry"An excellent choice for any collection looking to expand poetry beyond the obvious."Library Journal, starred reviewTrances of the Blast is a major new collection from beloved and award-winning poet Mary Ruefle. Full of the peculiarity and wit characteristic of Ruefle's work, the poems deliver her imaginative take on the world's riftsits paradoxes, failures, and lossand help us to better appreciate its redeeming strangeness.From "Goodnight Irene":I think the tree is very much turned onI can feel its sticky sap rising in my eyesIts sticky sap is in my eyesI do not think the tree wishes it were deadI think the baby is very much turned onLook baby a birdie in the treeSay bye-bye birdie now go out and get a jobMy job is writing poems and reading them to a cloudMary Ruefle is the author of many books of prose, poetry, and erasures. She is the recipient of the William Carlos Williams award, an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, and a Whiting Award. Her book of lectures, Madness, Rack, and Honey, was named a finalist for the National Books Critic Circle award. She lives and teaches in Vermont.
