12 Jul Three Poems by Mary Ruefle
A NEW DAWN
It became clearer and clearer.
Finally it was perfectly clear
and then it resembled Napoleon’s funeral,
the most purple and gold Paris
had ever seen, bees and lilies
embroidered on every available inch.
Purple is the color of talking about the past
and the future as if they were the same thing.
Gold is the color of mirth and shambles.
You loved and were loved
said the bee to the lily before buzzing off.
And the sun spoke:
I will drag you along
but the coffin you carry
must be empty.
DECONSTRUCTION
I think the sirens in The Odyssey sang The Odyssey,
for there is nothing more seductive, more terrible,
than the story of our own life, the one we do not
want to hear and will do anything to listen to.
EARTHLY FAILURE
The copier grew tired of copying,
made a terrible, sick sound
and died.
I told my friends the poem was
blurry because the copier wept
while reading it.
That poem ruined the world,
it made everyone shy.
Now I’ve ruined the poem,
there’s nothing left
but a knight sticking his sword
in a snail.
About the Poet
photo credit Libby Lewis
Mary Ruefle is the author of many books, including The Book (Wave Books, 2023), Dunce (Wave Books, 2019), which was a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize, longlisted for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics’ Circle Award, as well as a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize. She is also the author of My Private Property (Wave Books, 2016), Trances of the Blast (Wave Books, 2013), Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures (Wave Books, 2012), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism, and Selected Poems (Wave Books, 2010), winner of the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America. She has also published a comic book, Go Home and Go to Bed! (Pilot Books/Orange Table Comics, 2007), and is an erasure artist, whose treatments of nineteenth century texts have been exhibited in museums and galleries and published in A Little White Shadow (Wave Books, 2006). Ruefle 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 served as the state’s poet laureate from 2019 to 2024.
The poems “A New Dawn” and “Earthly Failure” appear in Dunce (Wave Books, 2019).
“Deconstruction” appears in The Most of It (Wave Books, 2008).
Related Event
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- On Saturday, July 18 at 7:30 p.m., Mary Ruefle will join poet Sasha Debevec-McKenney as featured performers at a Just Buffalo Literary Center Silo City Reading Series event also featuring a musical performance by guitarist William Tyler, and an installation by visual artist Julia Dzwonkoski.Silo City Reading Series events take place in Marine A grain elevator, behind Duende at Silo City, 85 Silo City Row. Doors open at 7 p.m., and the events begin at 7:30 p.m. Books by featured poets in the series will be available for purchase by Buffalo-based bookseller Fitz Books.
The Poem of the Week feature is curated by literary legacy awardee R.D. Pohl.