My Private Property

Ruefle can seem like a supernally well-read person who has grown bored with what smartness looks like, and has grown attracted to the other side… . She is not writing with a prescription, or at least not one for this earth. Nor is she celebrating the commonplace. She is concentrating on one thing at a time. -New York Times

The property that Ruefle deems private is the impalpable nature of the inner life we all share; it is at once ours and everyone’s… . 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. -Bookforum

Author of Madness, Rack, and Honey and Trances of the Blast, Mary Ruefle continues to be one of the most dazzling poets in America. My Private Property, comprised of short prose pieces, is a brilliant and charming display of her humor, deep imagination, mindfulness, and play.

Mary Ruefle is the author of many books, including Trances of the Blast; Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures, a finalist for the 2013 National Book Critics Circle Award in criticism; and Selected Poems, winner of the William Carlos Williams Award. Ruefle is the recipient of numerous honors, including 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.