Dunce

Mary Ruefle is the author of many books, including Dunce(Wave Books, 2019), which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry, and the LA Times Book Award; My Private Property (Wave Books, 2016), Trances of the Blast (Wave Books, 2013), Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures (Wave Books, 2012), which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism, and Selected Poems (Wave Books, 2010), which was the winner of the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America. She is the recipient of numerous honors, including the Robert Creeley 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. She lives in Bennington, Vermont, where she serves as the state's poet laureate.

"Ruefle has shown a talent for elevating her acute observations and narrative inclination well above mere anecdote to create quietly disquieting moments—a literature of barbed ambiguity and unresolved disruption."—Albert Mobilio, Bookforum"Straightforward in form, comic and companionable in tone, blessed with the Martian gift of seeing the strange in the ordinary and vice-versa. . . "—Joel Brouwer, Poetry"Ruefle’s speakers muse in a very deliberate, declarative syntax in a lot of universalities, generalities, and absolutes, speaking often for all of us."—Adrien Blevins, Ploughshares"For more than thirty years, she has freshened American poetry by humbly glorifying both the inner life and the outward experience."—Rodney Jones, Poetry Society of America"[She is] a poet of visionary imagination, abiding sensitivity, and melancholy humor."—Publishers Weekly"Ruefle is clearly one of the best American poets writing, and her body of work is remarkable for its spiritual force, intelligence, stylistic virtuosity, and adventurousness."—Tony Hoagland, On the Seawall"Ruefle is the Poet Laureate of the City of Ideas — surreal and lyrical and deeply moving at the same time."— Michael Klein, Los Angeles Review of Books

• Contents Apple in WaterLong White CloudSolomonDunceThe Good Fortune of Material ExistenceMaria and the Halls of PerishCrackerbellResinA Late Dense WorkMidnight ExpressGeneral DirectionEarthly FailureTuna and a PlaySuddenlyUnbeknownstDark CornerAttention!Little StreamMeditation on My SkullNorth WindHappinessLorraineThe EventualistAre You Talking about a Funeral?The FriendSent to the MonkBath TimeSearchlightI Cannot Be Quiet an HourInterlude for a Solitary FluteMuguet des BoisDispirited While Packing My Books…The Death of Atahualpa at the Hands of Pizarro’s MenSingular DreamPatienceLightly, Very LightlyInglenookSuper BowlJewelweedThe UnfurlSequoiaThe NoteSpecial DeliveryA New DawnNixieLittle Travel BookGrandma MosesThe Heart of Princess OsraLillianWintersaultDestinationHappy BirthdayOrigin MythThe CakeA Morning PersonVow of ExtinctionHow We MetErrandThe Butter Festival30 MarchHalloweenBoutonniereGenesisThe Leaves Acknowledgments