{"id":39130,"date":"2025-04-24T23:56:46","date_gmt":"2025-04-25T06:56:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/?p=39130"},"modified":"2025-04-24T23:56:47","modified_gmt":"2025-04-25T06:56:47","slug":"issue-95-mary-ruefle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/issue-95-mary-ruefle\/","title":{"rendered":"Issue 95: Mary Ruefle"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n
\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Found in\u00a0<\/strong><\/strong>Willow Springs\u00a095<\/a><\/p>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n

\n\n

June 29, 2024<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Grace Anne Anderson, Polly Buckingham, Kurtis Ebeling, Keely Leim, & Rook Rainsdowne<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A CONVERSATION WITH MARY RUEFLE<\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n
\n\n
\"\"
Photo Credit:\u00a0The Paris Review<\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

MARY RUEFLE\u2019S WORK SURPRISES<\/strong> and disrupts assumptions of what language is and what a poem can be. A reviewer for The Kenyon Review writes that Ruefle\u2019s work is comprised of \u201cmasterful, associative poems [that] exhibit a sharp intellect demonstrable of a mind of brilliant inventiveness.\u201d Her poems offer a mix of humor and gravity, and, as she said in her interview with us, the \u201clight and shade\u201d of life. This balance creates collections that rely on impulse and chance, material image, and linguistic play.

Ruefle has published over a dozen books of poetry and prose, including Dunce<\/em> (2019), My Private Property<\/em> (2016), and The Adamant<\/em> (1989), and most recently, The Book <\/em>(2023). She is also the author of a book of erasures called A Little White Shadow<\/em> (2006), a book of collected lectures titled Madness, Rack, and Honey<\/em> (2012), and the comic book, Go Home and Go to Bed<\/em> (2007). She is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Whiting Award. She currently lives in Vermont.

Since she is committed to a screen-free lifestyle, Mary Ruefle agreed to meet with us over telephone in early summer of 2024. Before the interview began, she confessed her delight at the visual distraction of a storm outside her office window. Her house in Vermont is surrounded by trees, and she was watching the leaves \u201cflying, turning upside down and shivering.\u201d We were equally delighted to speak with her about her recent book of essays, The Book<\/em>, her reading and writing practices, friendships, her imaginal life, memory, and the purpose of being a poet in today\u2019s world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

GRACE ANNE ANDERSON<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Dunce<\/em>, you make up words like \u201ctinkerghost\u201d or \u201ccrackerbell,\u201d and in Madness, Rack, and Honey<\/em>, you talk about how you rewrote your middle name from Lorraine to Low Rain in high school. Has this been a way that you have engaged with language since childhood? How has it changed?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MARY RUEFLE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I didn\u2019t make those words up. I think Galway Kinnell used to make whole new words up. I just made up a compound word. Tinker Bell\u2014crackerbell and tinkerghost.

You know the Low Rain thing was horrible; it was a mistake. I was in college and I was young and I did stupid things that I thought were funny that I no longer find funny. My middle name is Lorraine, and they asked me to write out the name I wanted on my college diploma. I didn\u2019t really care about my
college diploma. It was just a piece of paper. I don\u2019t even own it anymore. That\u2019s just who I am. I changed the spelling because there\u2019s a piece by W. S. Merwin\u2014it was like \u201cLow Rain, Roof Fell.\u201d My name is Ruefle, so I thought it was a hoot to put Merwin\u2019s entire text in my name. When my mother saw the diploma, she was horrified and hurt. How could I change the spelling of the name they gave me? I thought it was funny, that\u2019s all. If I
had to do it today, I wouldn\u2019t do it. But I\u2019m not graduating from college; you can\u2019t go back and undo things. I don\u2019t know what I was thinking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

POLLY BUCKINGHAM<\/strong>
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m really fascinated by the characters that populate some of your books. In Dunce<\/em>, you have the \u201cAgitator of the Soul\u201d and \u201cthe great slipping glimpser.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

RUEFLE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I love giving nomenclature. Have you ever sat down and written all the different names that Emily Dickinson gave for God? It\u2019s an amazing list. Like Papa Above. I think Agitator of the Soul was nomenclature for a unifying energy force behind the multiverse. It\u2019s from my imagination. I made it up. Because it\u2019s very boring to use the word God. My generation\u2019s used to it, but your generation, and yours and yours and yours and yours, is often horrified by it because that word for you fits in a tiny little bad box with the word bad over it. That\u2019s not how I see it. So I want to make up terms that mean the unifying energy behind the multiverse\u2014some other way to think of all that is and to give it a different name so that I don\u2019t alienate people.
The poet Michael Dickman\u2014I think it was Michael\u2014he told me he would never use the word God in a poem. He couldn\u2019t even conceive of it. He was taken aback that I use that word a lot.

But yeah, Agitator of the Soul. I think we all have them. Sometimes you meet someone in your life, a person, and they become the agitator of our soul. Sometimes the agitator of your soul is your parent. Sometimes the agitator of your soul is yourself. It can mean a lot of different things. I would have to see the poem that it\u2019s in and the context. Do you know the title of the poem where I use Agitator of the Soul?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BUCKINGHAM<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLong White Cloud\u201d from Dunce.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

RUEFLE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oh, yeah. \u201cLong White Cloud.\u201d I should have included a note in the back of the book about that. And I never did. Since that book came out, I\u2019ve realized that I should have. Do you know what Long White Cloud is? Oh, I\u2019m a terrible person. I just make these assumptions. Long White Cloud is the indigenous M\u0101ori name, translated into English, for New Zealand. The M\u0101ori, the indigenous people of New Zealand, call New Zealand by a M\u0101ori word that means long white cloud. But you don\u2019t really need to know that. That\u2019s the way poetry works. I put something on the page; you\u2019ve got to go meet it and bring your own sensibility to it. I only say that long white cloud thing because it\u2019s a very beachy poem. There\u2019re seagulls, and there\u2019s a beach. And, of course, New Zealand is very beachy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KEELY LEIM<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In My Private Property<\/em>, and other places in your writing too, certainly in Madness, Rack, and Honey<\/em>, it\u2019s almost as if you\u2019re removing a curio from a case, describing it, and placing it back on the shelf so that if there was an apocalypse and an alien came to see it, they might be able to understand the item and what rules have governed it. It seems like this requires a sort of second sight. Do you enjoy seeing things and then seeing them again as if for the first time?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

RUEFLE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, I do. Any good description is going to be seeing something for the first time, or making the reader actually viscerally see it or hear it or taste it or feel it. Are you thinking about \u201cThe Woman Who Couldn\u2019t Describe a Thing If She Could?\u201d That\u2019s a piece in My Private Property<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LEIM<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes. That\u2019s the one that stood out to me\u2014also even \u201cWoman with a Yellow Scarf\u201d and \u201cThe Most of It\u201d where you describe the scene very clearly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

RUEFLE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

With \u201cWoman with a Yellow Scarf,\u201d I was fascinated by the lives of people who flip through a story, a piece of prose, a novel, or a short story, people who simply cross the street and are never seen again. That fascinated me, and I wanted to give a life to this woman\u2014it\u2019s in a piece by Albert Camus, if I remember correctly\u2014who simply crosses the street and is wearing a yellow scarf. I thought, well, what about her? What about her life? That would only confuse an alien\u2014ha ha, I\u2019m making a joke. But \u201cThe Woman Who Couldn\u2019t Describe a Thing If She Tried\u201d I could see fitting your description of this alien trying to figure out how we lived on this planet. But I can tell you very clearly how that piece came about. Do you want to hear it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Okay, I have to be really careful here. I was at a summer literary conference, and every night I had to attend readings. And every night I listened to the fiction writers read. And it was all description. And I sat there, and it was endless description. It was endless description, night after night after night. And I said to myself, this is ridiculous. It\u2019s just description. I want to write something in which there\u2019s no description at all, but people still know what\u2019s happening. So I went back to my room and wrote that piece. I was emotionally against description.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BUCKINGHAM <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That resonates with The Book <\/em>and the conversation you have about haiku that goes throughout the book, especially at the very end when the haiku writer can\u2019t come up with the haiku but they keep coming up with these gorgeous descriptions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

RUEFLE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, I published The Book too soon. You want to know why? Because my friend called me\u2014she\u2019s one of the friends, she\u2019s a poet, who\u2019s mentioned in the haiku piece, the one where the poets are dickering forever about a single word, which is absurd, but that\u2019s what we do, right? We can talk about a single word for hours, which is absolutely ridiculous, but it\u2019s what we do. So I got this phone call last week. She found a translation of that haiku in a book. It was published in the 1950s and introduced a lot of western readers to haiku, by R. H. Blyth. I have two volumes of it. And she found, because she\u2019s writing haiku now, in volume four the following translation: \u201cThe mind. What is it?\/ Is it the breeze blowing in\/ the pine trees in the India ink drawing?\u201d Instead of heart, it\u2019s mind. That blew me away and makes perfect sense, and I loved it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But what really stood out was the worst part of that translation. \u201cIndia ink drawing\u201d\u2014it\u2019s very awkward, but it\u2019s absolutely accurate. I was shocked because we\u2019re talking 17th century Japan or something, and it was obviously a Sumi drawing. It was black brush strokes, right? On a scroll. It was a Sumi ink drawing. Blyth wanted to make that clear by using \u201cIndia ink drawing.\u201d A western reader should know what India ink is, black ink. But I never pictured it as a Sumi drawing. I always saw a colored oil painting, which is ridiculous of me because there weren\u2019t colored oil paintings in Japan at that time. So then I started calling the same people and reading this other translation. And one of them said they always saw it as a watercolor, in color. Everyone saw it in color. It fascinates me, that\u2019s all. Just fascinates me. Even though I don\u2019t like the sound of \u201cin the India ink drawing,\u201d it\u2019s accurate because you see black brush strokes. And, also, \u201cmind\u201d instead of \u201cheart.\u201d I would like to know if the Japanese character for mind and heart are the same. I don\u2019t like \u201cin the India ink drawing,\u201d but I don\u2019t mind substituting mind for heart. It works. I wish I could have included that in the essay. It could have gotten even more interesting, but, alas, it just happened last week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KURTIS EBELING<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Could you talk about the tension between humor and tragedy in your poetry and prose? You write about this in Madness, Rack, and Honey, <\/em>specifically in \u201cI Remember, I Remember,\u201d when you address Berryman\u2019s \u201cDream Song #14.\u201d How have your thoughts on the subject changed since then, if at all, and how has it informed your approach to composing The Book?<\/em><\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n

RUEFLE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Keats said, \u201cIn order to write poetry, you need a sense of both light and shade.\u201d And he\u2019s absolutely right. Life is tragic\u2014it\u2019s pure unadulterated tragedy\u2014but it\u2019s shot through with moments of joy. Also, we are capable of humor, the human species, and humor is a great mystery to me. It\u2019s an extraordinary balance to the tragedy. I have a terrific sense of humor, and as a writer my sense of humor is going to play into my work. It just is. I think my poems now are not very humorous; I could be wrong. I think humor played a larger part in my work when I was younger. But why? There were more occasions for humor? My irony phase? I don\u2019t know. But I do tend to mix the two. It\u2019s how I see the world, so it\u2019s there in my writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BUCKINGHAM <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Book<\/em> is not less humorous, but maybe a little more muted? The humor is still there, but the tragedy is bigger. One of the poems that does what Kurtis is talking about really beautifully is \u201cThe Effusive\u201d: \u201cIt\u2019s been a great year. I turned seventy, and my brother shot himself.\u201d Could you talk about the ways in which opposites create humor?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

RUEFLE <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeah, there\u2019s humor in that. Well, again, I think opposites are just a sense of light and shade. You can write a long, heavy-handed tragic poem, and you can write a long, light-as-air hysterically funny poem. But, ultimately, they\u2019re not going to be as rich as if you put a mix of sensibility, a mix of attitude, perhaps, or outlook. It\u2019s more than just a mix of emotion because part of it can be two different ways to view emotion. If you have in your life a year that is a big year\u2014it\u2019s important, significant things happened\u2014that could be a year of good, happiness-producing things occurring, or it could also be a pivotal year in which many tragic things happen. But they\u2019re both significant years. I think it was Toni Morrison\u2014she won the Nobel Prize and then her house burned down, and she lost everything in like a week. Something very similar happened recently to another famous author where these two things collided in a small period of time. That\u2019s the roller coaster of life. Even the shape of a roller coaster, how it goes down, comes up, goes down, comes up. It\u2019s the ride. The whole shape of a roller coaster has a lot to do with what we\u2019re talking about. I think The Book<\/em> is the most accessible thing I\u2019ve written, and it\u2019s the most autobiographical thing I\u2019ve ever written.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ROOK RAINSDOWNE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you have a particular reading practice? How do you decide what to read next, and what are you reading now?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

RUEFLE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m running out of time to read. I will not live to read all this stuff I want to. I have authors I love\u2014and when I say I love, that means I\u2019ll read anything they wrote. I just picked up two books that I ordered. I never buy books because I don\u2019t have a lifestyle where I can spend money on books, but it doesn\u2019t make any difference because I live near a phenomenal Goodwill. I\u2019m looking at the floor of my study. I think I\u2019ve got about seventy-two books I would like to read but have not read. I\u2019m a huge, huge fan of the great 20th century Italian writer Natalia Ginzburg. Natalia Ginzburg is a god. I\u2019m a huge Robert Walser fan, of the short pieces, and I had just finished a book called Little Snow Landscape<\/em>. I\u2019ve wanted to read a book called Walks with Walser <\/em>by Carl Seelig, who was a friend of his. When Walser was living in his last asylum\u2014for the last twenty or twenty-five years of his life, he was not writing\u2014he took long walks, and Carl visited him every day, and they walked. This is his friend\u2019s reminiscing about those walks. For poetry, I just finished what I thought was a phenomenal book\u2014a friend of mine translated it from the French\u2014Every Minute Is First<\/em>, Marie-Claire Bancquart. I guess that\u2019s kind of weird esoteric stuff, right? I really love this French poet. She died, and this book is the poems she wrote while she was ill and dying in the last two or three years of her life. All three of the books are in translation\u2014one from Italian, one from German, and one from French. I don\u2019t really keep up with what\u2019s au courant. I just don\u2019t have time. You tend to do that when you\u2019re younger. I\u2019m all over the place. I\u2019m looking at an amazing children\u2019s book I absolutely love by the children\u2019s author Jon Klassen called The Skull<\/em>. It\u2019s a picture book\u2014you know, with big words. I highly recommend it. I\u2019m looking at a biography of Anne Frank. It\u2019s a full biography, and I think it\u2019s the only one. It\u2019s kind of depressing to look at books you know you\u2019ll never read. But I will now turn away and look at the leaves again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ANDERSON<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m curious about your ritual or writing process of creating erasures and how that might have changed over time. Does erasure as a practice inspire other work you do, or is it more of a self-enclosed practice?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

RUEFLE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a self-enclosed practice, and I now refer to it as my hobby. I\u2019ve never had a hobby, and I think it\u2019s as close as I\u2019ll ever come to one. I don\u2019t write every day, but I do two facing pages of an erasure book every morning, religiously, and I get pissed off if I can\u2019t. It\u2019s something I do that delights me, but it has very much changed. At some point I began to incorporate images so that the images are juxtaposed with the text. So the books are no longer blank pages blacked out, or whited out, or colored out. They still use all those mediums, but, more often than not, there\u2019s an image glued on the page that I have cut from a book or a magazine. I\u2019m working on my 112th book of erasure. My other work does not influence it at all. But it\u2019s my mind and my eye, so it\u2019s hard to say where one ends and one begins. If I do an erasure page and I\u2019m particularly fond of the text and love the words I\u2019ve left on the page, I\u2019ll start a poem. That doesn\u2019t happen very often; they\u2019re very uneven because sometimes I make a mistake and choose a book that the language is not very interesting\u2014I thought it would be, and it\u2019s not. But I do have several poems that originated in an erasure book. I\u2019ll lift a phrase or a sentence, and I\u2019ll either start a poem or use that phrase or sentence in a poem. I\u2019m sure there\u2019s something in Dunce <\/em>that comes from an erasure page. I couldn\u2019t tell you now; I\u2019d have to sit and read the book, and I don\u2019t want to read the book because I wrote it. I love it when it happens because now I\u2019ve got the beginning of a poem. Anything helps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BUCKINGHAM<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

To what extent do surrealist-type techniques play into the practice of writing for you? I\u2019m thinking about things like erasure where you\u2019re leaving things to chance. To what degree is randomness, chance, and serendipity part of the process?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

RUEFLE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s part of everything I do. It\u2019s also a major part of when I write a poem. Chance is everything. Surprise and chance\u2014you cannot intend them. They\u2019re not an intention. How they enter in is you being in a state where you\u2019re completely open to anything that happens. When I used to teach, and I would be looking at someone\u2019s poem, I could tell when someone was so intent on what their original idea for the poem was that it\u2019s like beating a horse to death. They just drag it. They\u2019re not open to whatever might happen, to some surprising juxtaposition or memory that might suddenly come up in the poem. You need to be in a state of absolute openness and acceptance of it happening. That\u2019s how it happens. You create a state in which it can happen, and sometimes you\u2019ll see a line\u2014in this poem, this imaginary poem I\u2019m thinking of that beats itself to death because it so relentlessly won\u2019t swerve or leave the author\u2019s original intention\u2014you\u2019ll see a really great line. And I will look at that line, and I\u2019ll say, \u201cYou see what happened here? I bet you didn\u2019t intend that.\u201d And they\u2019ll go, \u201cNo, suddenly that just popped into my head.\u201d And I\u2019ll say, \u201cWell, cut the poem all the way back to that line and see what happens if you follow from there.\u201d Sometimes, a young poet will have an amazing line, and then, instead of following the path where that line leads them, they\u2019ll rein themselves back like, \u201cWhoops, I\u2019m going too far.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But chance and randomness. That\u2019s in everything I do. Actually, though, I\u2019m consciously choosing in the erasures; they\u2019re not found texts. They\u2019re books I find, and I make the pages. The words I leave on the page are consciously chosen; there\u2019s nothing random about it except, of course, it\u2019s a form, and the form is this: write something, but you can only use all the words on this page. You have to choose words from the words that are in front of you. That\u2019s a restriction, isn\u2019t it? Chance is second nature to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LEIM<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Are there other rituals that you tend to return to? You note in The Most of It<\/em> that you read in bed first thing in the morning every thirty or so days for a couple hours. Is that something you try to hold to? Do you have other reading, writing, or even personal rituals you keep?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

RUEFLE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every thirty days, yes. Usually on a Sunday, it said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

RUEFLE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those were the days. I\u2019m sure I did it. Those were the days. They are over, Keely. They\u2019re over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LEIM<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sorry to hear it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

RUEFLE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

They were nice while it lasted. Wouldn\u2019t that be nice, reading in bed in the morning? Oh, that would be fabulous. Anyway, rituals? I mean, I have rituals, but my rituals don\u2019t have to do with reading and writing. When I think of rituals in my life, I don\u2019t think of reading and writing. For instance, every single
morning that you get up, do you do the same things in the first thirty minutes? The identical things?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LEIM<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It depends on how many kids are asking for help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

RUEFLE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oh, how many kids do you have?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LEIM<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Four, but generally, yes. More or less, generally, yes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

RUEFLE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Keely, wow. You are a brave, brave soul. Yeah, reading in bed in the morning, that must have blown you away. Who could? I\u2019m taking care of two people now, so I know what you go through. But no, I tend to do the same thing every morning when I wake up, and it\u2019s kind of boring: I boil the water to make coffee, I fill the dog\u2019s water bowl, I make sure that the vase with flowers has enough water, what plants need watering. If it\u2019s in the winter, I cut back the wicks of the candles because I burn candles at night in the winter, but not in the summer. And then, I have to do something else. And I do the same thing every morning. This is the morning ritual. These are the things I do. It\u2019s very repetitive, but is that a ritual? I don\u2019t know. What\u2019s a ritual? I go to the same food markets on the same day of the week every week. I\u2019m one of those people. I go Mondays and Wednesdays, that\u2019s it. You ask me to go to the grocery store on a Friday, and I would say, \u201cI can\u2019t. It\u2019s not Monday or Wednesday.\u201d I go to one store on Monday and another store on Wednesday. To me, those are rituals. None of them have to do with reading and writing, but that\u2019s okay. I like ordinary life, you know? So do your children have rituals? Rituals are really important, really important. And writers have rituals. But I can\u2019t think of any that I have. I\u2019m not a person who can write in public. I can\u2019t write in a caf\u00e9. I\u2019m not a caf\u00e9 person. I mean, even if I live near one, I\u2019m not. You know? I can\u2019t think of any writing rituals. The ritual in the morning is the erasure. That\u2019s the closest I have to a writing ritual, doing the two pages of erasure in the morning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BUCKINGHAM<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s one poem in The Book<\/em>, your Elizabeth Bishop poem, where you tell us in the back of the book that you sat and wrote this thing during an art installation, and then you stopped writing it when the installation was over and you left. William Stafford in the last year or so of his life said he didn\u2019t really rewrite anymore. I wonder how you feel about the rough edges of poetry and how much they show through as an aesthetic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

RUEFLE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I like rough edges. I\u2019m not someone who writes professionally polished poems, but I also don\u2019t rewrite very much. I edit my poems. Editing is simple. I never know what people mean by edit, rewrite, or revision. To me, editing is, you get rid of a comma, you cross out a line, you change the title, you change a word. That\u2019s simple. Rewrite: I rewrite sentences. I\u2019m not an experienced prose writer, but the joy of the English sentence is how many different ways you can say the same thing. It\u2019s mind-boggling. So the more prose I write, I do rewrite sentences and try to say the same thing in a different way. I guess that would be rewriting. But revision is a whole different ball game. And I do all of them, and also there are poems where I don\u2019t. For me revision is major. Revision is when you write something and you get rid of 75% of it, and what started to be about a frog ends up to be a political poem. That\u2019s revision. \u201cOh, look. I liked this line, where this was going. So let me get rid of these two pages and go back and go an entirely different direction that this line I\u2019m keeping hinted at.\u201d That\u2019s revision. Revision is radical. It\u2019s radical. Editing is isolated changes that you see at a glance, and rewriting is trying to say the exact same thing in a different way, using a different syntax and using different words. But revision is a whole new vision of a work. They\u2019re all interesting. I like doing them all. But do I really? There are poems I have in books that I didn\u2019t change a word from the time it went on the page. There are those too. I\u2019m not someone who swears by one or the other. You do what\u2019s necessary given the piece of writing in front of you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

EBELING<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was recently at Community of Writers where Matthew Zapruder gave a talk about creating community and keeping correspondence through letters with fellow poets. He mentioned you as somebody he likes to write letters to. Do you find a similar kind of value in correspondence or letter writing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

RUEFLE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I love writing letters. It\u2019s actually my favorite literary form. I\u2019m a voracious letter writer. I correspond with twelve people. It\u2019s becoming harder and harder the less time I have. These are letters I type on a typewriter. Envelopes, stamps, all that stuff. It\u2019s a major part of my world. Major. I know your generation doesn\u2019t write letters anymore, but as writers you should try it because usually you end up liking it a lot. Writing letters to other writers is a sense of community. I don\u2019t live near any of my writer friends. None of them are in this town. I have friends here, but they\u2019re not writers. So that\u2019s a way to keep in touch with my writer friends because they\u2019re all over the country. And I don\u2019t live in a city, so I don\u2019t go to readings or whatever writers do in the city. I don\u2019t do any of that. I don\u2019t have a community of writers. I do not belong to a community of writers. I did when I was teaching because I had my colleagues, but I don\u2019t teach anymore. So I use letters, I suppose. I\u2019m kind of a loner and a recluse more than anything else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I just like writing letters. I like reading letters, reading the letters of an author I love. Or just reading old letters. I like to collect old letters written by strangers, people I don\u2019t know. Sometimes, I have friends who are getting rid of things, like I have a friend who gave me a whole batch of letters that were written by her grandparents and great-grandparents, and she didn\u2019t want to keep them, but she knew I like letters and enjoy reading them. When you read letters and also diaries and journals, what sinks in is life was pretty much the same. People are always talking about the weather. That doesn\u2019t change. Going here, going there, someone got sick, someone died, what the weather\u2019s like. And postcards. History of the world through postcards. Wow. The postage stamp was invented in 1847. I love stamps. It\u2019s an important part of my life. I like books, I like letters, I love movies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BUCKINGHAM<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m really charmed by your writing about friends, and not just the importance of friendship but that they\u2019re the characters who people a lot of your work. Would you talk about that, especially that long poem about the friends in The Book<\/em>?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

RUEFLE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I consider it an essay, but you can call it whatever you want. We too often take our friends for granted. And my friends are my community. That\u2019s my lifeline. In today\u2019s world, spouses and lovers can come and go, but friends ultimately don\u2019t. The nature of the relationship is different. When you\u2019re in college and you meet people, it never occurs to you that you will still be meeting them fifty years from now. And I say that emotionally because tonight, my best friend from college is coming to visit, and we met fifty years ago. We\u2019ve known each other since we were, what, twenty? And we\u2019re now in our seventies. That\u2019s pretty incredible. And eventually in life you have friends who remember your parents who are long dead. Her parents aren\u2019t living, my parents aren\u2019t living. She knew my parents, I knew her parents. You meet and make friends constantly, but it\u2019s the really old ones who remember all sorts of parts of your life that a new friend can\u2019t remember. Friends are so important. I love my friends. And I have young friends too. I make new friends sometimes and think, oh I have enough friends, I don\u2019t need any more friends, and then . . . A young poet and his partner moved into town, and we became friends. Of course, they didn\u2019t last very long, they live in Seattle now, but it just happened. It just happened. I don\u2019t know how it happens, but it\u2019s one of the miracles of life. Friendship. So keep making friends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LEIM<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You\u2019ve lived all over the country in both rural and urban settings, and I heard that you lived for a while as a caretaker of a farm. Could you speak to these sorts of places and how they\u2019ve shaped your life and your writing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

RUEFLE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

My father was in the military and so we moved every few years; we lived all over. I never had a community\u2014I was constantly changing schools, changing friends\u2014and never lived near grandparents, saw them once every three years. So that\u2019s a life in itself, right? I went to college in Vermont, and I didn\u2019t want to move anymore. I didn\u2019t want to leave anymore. I liked it here, and I wanted to stay. I was becoming seduced by the natural world. And after some very difficult years, I lucked out and got a job caretaking an estate that had belonged to Robert Frost called The Gully. I was there for ten years. And then my life destabilized again. I lived in China for a year as I couldn\u2019t get any jobs in this country because I don\u2019t have an MFA or anything.
They needed English teachers. And I\u2019ve taught at universities in different cities in the United States. But my home has always been here in southern Vermont, in a very small, boring town. I like small, boring towns. Many people think they like them, and they try living in them and they go nuts, like my friends who had to leave after a year. They\u2019re in Seattle, and they\u2019re happy. I\u2019ve lived many different places here, from this grand estate to an apartment that had holes in the floor where you could see the snow underneath the house. There was no insulation and the heat didn\u2019t work. And then I lived in an apartment I was very fond of, but it was in a very bad section of town. I did come to feel a great deal of solidarity with the street I lived on. It was an education in itself. But then I was able to buy a home. I\u2019m only a quarter mile from the old apartment, but I\u2019m surrounded by trees, and I don\u2019t have a neighbor on the left or the right, only behind me. I\u2019m downtown in a small, boring town, but I\u2019m not surrounded by other buildings. It took me a long time to find this particular place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LEIM<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you feel like these places have shaped your writing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

RUEFLE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

No, not really. The place that shapes my work is my imagination. I have to live in my imagination because I never had much stability. You can nail me as a poet who lives in New England because of the flora and fauna. Ultimately, when we talk about poets of place, all that means is that the flora and fauna and animals in their poems are the flora and fauna and animals of where they live. That\u2019s all it means, really. So there\u2019s not a lot of cactus in my poems because I don\u2019t live in Arizona. There\u2019s an awful lot of deer and maple trees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I never had any roots, and that has shaped me as a rootless drifter who then is forced inward. I make my home wherever I go, but I have lived here now for half a century. I\u2019ve gone away a lot, but I always maintained a base here in Vermont. If I\u2019m traveling and I reenter my state and I cross the state line, I beep my horn. I\u2019m home. But I don\u2019t know where I live. I honestly don\u2019t. I think I live in my mind. Yeah, I live in my mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

RAINSDOWNE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve been reading some poets lately who seem to have an enduring imaginative place in their imagination. Is there an enduring place you return to in your mind?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

RUEFLE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Isn\u2019t that what memory is? Memories are an enduring place in your mind you return to, and they\u2019re entirely imaginary. As you should know by now, your memory is very different from someone else\u2019s memory of the identical event. You\u2019ll reach a point where people will have a memory of you that you have no memory of. Everyone\u2019s memory is different. I have very humorous memories of fantastically fun and funny things I did with friends, and I also have tragic memories. And they come and go. You never know when your memory is going to be a happy one or a sad one because, believe me, they come out of nowhere. They can be horrible or they can be wonderful. So we go back to the roller coaster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ll tell you an interesting thing about aging. All my friends who are my age, we all agree on this. It\u2019s really spooky, guys. As you age, when you become elderly, you have an onslaught of childhood memories that you\u2019ve never had before. It\u2019s uncanny. Childhood memories you\u2019ve never had before come back, on top of the ones that you\u2019ve had your whole life, but there\u2019s a whole new slew of them. I have more childhood memories now than I\u2019ve ever had. It wasn\u2019t anything I particularly paid attention to when I was younger because you\u2019re too busy making memories when you\u2019re young. You\u2019re making them, you\u2019re making memories. But when you\u2019re old, let\u2019s face it, you\u2019re not making memories because you\u2019re not going to live to have those memories. So you guys, you get out there, and you get busy making memories. That\u2019s my advice. Make those memories<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ANDERSON<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You once said you don\u2019t think about the reader when writing. In light of your poem \u201cThe Perfect Reader\u201d from your Selected Poems<\/em>, how do you keep the reader out of your mind when writing? Do you write to an ideal reader?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

RUEFLE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t think of the reader when I\u2019m writing a poem at all. I do think of the reader when I\u2019m writing a prose essay because they\u2019re very different things. If I\u2019m writing prose, I\u2019m engaging in public discourse; I\u2019m using the language of public discourse, which is prose. I\u2019m speaking to you in it now. But when I\u2019m writing a poem, it\u2019s just my inner life. It\u2019s just me. I\u2019m not speaking for all poets, and I think I\u2019ve gone on record as saying I don\u2019t. Why would I care what other people think about my inner life? I\u2019m not thinking of other people when I write poems. With prose I do. Madness, Rack, and Honey<\/em> very much had the reader in mind because they\u2019re lectures I\u2019m giving to a group of people, and I\u2019m terribly aware that I\u2019m going to be standing in front of
an audience. Who do I write for? I write for the Agitator of the Soul, who\u2019s often myself and sometimes a stranger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LEIM<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This qualification between poetry and prose is a helpful one; nevertheless, you do have a lot of readers. In light of this, what posture do you think, or hope, a reader may take with your work? Like a posture of credulity, skepticism, or humorous engagement?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

RUEFLE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I just want to make my readers smile. That\u2019s all. No more, no less. And you have me, but I don\u2019t have you. You say, \u201cI have readers.\u201d Readers have me because they have my books, but I don\u2019t have readers because I don\u2019t have my readers. I\u2019m always completely blown away that I have readers because I\u2019m looking around, and I don\u2019t see them. They\u2019re not part of my daily life. But if you have books in your house or apartment or your backpack or your purse, then you\u2019re carrying the work of another mind with you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is a tradition that has been going on for a very long time, this writing. And I\u2019m just carrying it on, that\u2019s all I\u2019m doing. And I\u2019m proud to have spent my life carrying it on, for better or for worse. Then it just gets passed on. It doesn\u2019t stop with me; it doesn\u2019t stop with anyone. It just keeps going on, and we all float into oblivion. But there\u2019s always another generation coming along carrying the tradition on, and that\u2019s a beautiful thing. That\u2019s what you have to have faith and believe in. You\u2019re carrying on a tradition. But, yeah, I don\u2019t walk around thinking, oh I have a lot of readers. I mean, I never do. And if people point it out to me, I\u2019m often surprised because, I don\u2019t know, it\u2019s surprising to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BUCKINGHAM<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I love that you say this. The title poem in The Book<\/em> is really about you being a reader and finding the book that was written just for you. It coincides with what you\u2019re saying, and it\u2019s really beautiful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

RUEFLE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If anyone in the whole world would ever have that feeling reading a book by me, I would have served my purpose. I have made someone smile or cry. Literature\u2019s a lot bigger than we are. It\u2019s huge and we are just tiny specks, just like in the universe we are tiny specks. And then within the tiny speck, we have this other thing called literature. It really is a cult. Your average American would rather go out and do something that\u2019s their idea of fun than stay home and read a book. That\u2019s just a fact. I would rather stay home and read a book. But it is what it is. My whole life geared me in this direction, I guess. I must have fallen in love deeply with reading as a child. I found other people who were lonely too, and they were all in books.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We write as much for the dead as we do for the living. It\u2019s like saying, \u201cThank you for being there for me when I needed you. Let me write you a letter by writing a book of poems. Even though you\u2019re dead.\u201d Issa is one of my favorite poets. Tons of humor in Issa, and sadness. I\u2019m always sort of saying, \u201cHi, Issa! Hello out there!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BUCKINGHAM<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you have a translation you like better than others? Of Issa?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

RUEFLE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

No, I just have a lot of haiku books, all different translations of his. A great haiku place to start is that book by Robert Hass, The Essential Haiku<\/em>. That\u2019s a great book. I recommend that to all of you because he really goes out of his way to show they\u2019re not all the same. Haiku, they\u2019re very distinct personalities. We tend to lump it all together like, \u201cOh, a haiku is a haiku is a haiku.\u201d But in fact, every great haiku master is absolutely identifiable and different with their own sensibility. In schools today, we lump things together like \u201cwomen writers\u201d or \u201cgay writers\u201d or \u201cblack writers\u201d or \u201cAsian writers\u201d as if they\u2019re all the same. They\u2019re made up of distinct, individual voices, distinct individual experiences and voices, and no two are alike. I don\u2019t like it when they\u2019re all lumped together like that because they\u2019re made up of individuals, that\u2019s all. Toni Morrison does not read like James Baldwin, two phenomenal writers and they couldn\u2019t be more different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

EBELING<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Your last seven or so books were published by Wave Books. I\u2019m wondering about your relationship with them, how they found you or how you found them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

RUEFLE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I love Wave. Wave Books changed my life. They\u2019re like a family to me. It\u2019s a very small press, with four or five people in the office. I have an excellent relationship with my editor, Joshua Beckman, who is a phenomenal poet in his own right. And how did they find me? Joshua found me. I can tell you the story of how it happened. I had been doing erasure for a very long time, and I had never read from an erasure book in front of an audience. I don\u2019t do it anymore, but I had never done it, and I was reading in New York, and I took a deep breath, and I said, \u201cWell, this is weird, but I have this erasure book, and I\u2019m going to read it.\u201d He was in the audience, and he loved it. Wave Books had just started. He had just begun to work there as an editor, and he asked if they could publish it. I was thrilled. Little White Shadow<\/em> was my first book with Wave, and then I went over to
them for everything. I\u2019m very, very happy. I couldn\u2019t have asked for a better home for my work. We found each other at the right moment because Joshua had just found Wave, Wave had just found him, he had just found me, I had just found him. It all worked out. It just happened. It just happened. If he hadn\u2019t been at the reading, would it have ever happened? I don\u2019t know. If I hadn\u2019t been invited to read there, would it ever have happened? I don\u2019t know. It\u2019s a small, tiny enough press where there\u2019s individual attention paid to manuscripts in a way that I had never experienced, people honestly giving me feedback. Because I\u2019m someone who loves feedback. I\u2019m not someone who\u2019s hurt by it, and I never had it, so I found it really helpful. But the trick is you have to have someone who you really trust, someone whose sensibility is the same as yours because if you get someone whose sensibility is completely different, then you\u2019re just going to lock horns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LEIM<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Madness, Rack, and Honey<\/em>, you have a quotation that has stuck with me for years now. \u201cEvery time I read a poem, I\u2019m willing to die insofar as I\u2019m surrendering myself to the mercy of someone else\u2019s speech, and I do not want to die in the presence of someone else\u2019s vile corruption of feeling. You are supposed to be preparing me for my death.\u201d In light of this, could you elaborate on what you consider a poet\u2019s job to be?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

RUEFLE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think the only general job a poet has is to keep the tradition going within their lifetime, using their vernacular. Using their vernacular in their lifetime and then passing it on. That\u2019s ultimately their job, to carry on the tradition of literature. That\u2019s a general statement, but that\u2019s the only statement I can think of that would encompass everyone. It\u2019s not really a job. It\u2019s a vocation. And notice that word vocation: vocal, vocabulary. It\u2019s an inner vocation more than a job. Your inner vocation dictates to you what it is you\u2019ll be doing. And what one person is doing is not what another person is going to be doing. You know, there\u2019s a lot of trash out there. And I don\u2019t want to spend my time reading it. And that\u2019s not because I\u2019m mean, it\u2019s because I don\u2019t have time. Life is short. It grows shorter every year of your life. It doesn\u2019t mean I only like heavy-handed serious stuff. Of course not. I love Robert Walser. How lighthearted can you get? Reading him is like drinking champagne\u2014I think William Gass said that. But I don\u2019t know. I don\u2019t have a clue. I wish I could help you, but I don\u2019t have a clue what my job is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LEIM<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Okay, so to rephrase, how do you hope you might prepare us for our deaths?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

RUEFLE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Making you smile. Making you smile. Anyone who can smile in the face of death has the right attitude. And it ain\u2019t easy. To prepare you. I don\u2019t want you to be afraid of being stupid. I don\u2019t want you to be afraid of being embarrassed. I don\u2019t want you to be afraid that you\u2019re missing out on something because everyone is, and no one is. I want you to wake up to the wonders of the world that are all around you. There\u2019s all this stuff that\u2019s going on now, all you have to do is read the newspapers. It\u2019s so disheartening. It\u2019s frightening, what\u2019s going on in the world today. Nationally and internationally. And I do keep up with it. Sometimes it\u2019s more than I can bear, and I have to go into a room and close the door and read a book and remind myself that people were always troubled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Find something that you love to do. That\u2019s the important thing in every life. I don\u2019t care what it is so long as it doesn\u2019t hurt other people. And even if it\u2019s just a hobby and you have another life, that hobby can keep you going. There\u2019s someone who might be miserable in their job, but they really really love building miniature airplanes on the weekend and that makes them happy. That\u2019s a beautiful thing. For me, it\u2019s reading and writing, and it always has been.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you\u2019re going to dedicate your life to this, it\u2019s not easy. It\u2019s a challenge, and it\u2019s going to be difficult. Don\u2019t be afraid of the difficulty. Keep going. Above all, patience. Patience is what every writer needs, endless patience, because you only learn by doing, and it takes a lot of doing. You need patience. And if for any reason at all, you feel you one day want to stop and do something else, don\u2019t ever ever ever feel bad about that decision or ashamed
in some way because everything is ultimately connected. Your journey is unpredictable, and it may be that getting an MFA led you slowly in this other direction. And that\u2019s a beautiful thing too. Who knows? Nobody knows. I have encountered too many younger writers who were really frustrated and there were some who persisted and some who gave up and they both have meaningful lives. They have meaningful lives. One\u2019s not better than the other. Follow the dictates of your heart, and, remember, mind and heart are interchangeable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MARY RUEFLE\u2019S WORK SURPRISES and disrupts assumptions of what language is and what a poem can be. A reviewer for The Kenyon Review writes that Ruefle\u2019s work is comprised of \u201cmasterful, associative poems [that] exhibit a sharp intellect demonstrable of a mind of brilliant inventiveness.\u201d Her poems offer a mix of humor and gravity, and, … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":41002,"featured_media":39174,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wpo365_audiences":[],"wpo365_private":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-current-issue","category-interviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39130"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/41002"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39130"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39130\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39175,"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39130\/revisions\/39175"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}