Trances of the Blast

William Carlos Williams Award winner for Selected Poems and National Book Critics Circle Award finalist for Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures, Ruefle writes poetry that bears serious reading. She's not especially ornate, instead introducing ordinary scenes in mostly straightforward language, then twisting them with keen insight to show the momentous dark beneath. From the breakfast scene in "New Morning"-"I smell the cream/ before I put it in my coffee/ because I never want to suffer/ like that again"-to the standard weirdness of college amplified until the speaker reads "every poem/ ever written, and [finds] not a single one/ even remotely sad enough," the mood is indeed slightly sad, slightly spooky, slightly off. The poem "Fireworks" tartly comments, "The world was designed and built/ to overwhelm and astonish. Which makes it hard to like," and throughout this book readers find themselves negotiating the overwhelming. ("Fireworks" starts with a mild mix-up over Jan Vermeer's name and ends with the last tsar and his family "shot to fleshy pieces.") Ruefle's poems are deeply personal but don't feel intrusively confessional. In common parlance, readers will relate. VERDICT An excellent choice for any collection looking to expand poetry beyond the obvious.-Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.