Mary Ruefle on Firsts & Lasts

“I didn’t know such a thing existed, and here I am in it. Although at that time I didn’t see it that way; I just simply walked around every day exploding, just exploding, with everything I was seeing and experiencing.”

Mary Ruefle is the author of many books of poetry, including Dunce, finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize and longlister for the 2019 National Book Award in Poetry; My Private Property; Trances of the Blast; A Little White Shadow, an art book of “erasures.” She is also the author of a book of collected lectures, Madness, Rack, and Honey.

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 teaches in the MFA program at Vermont College and is the poet laureate of Vermont.