The Most of It » (New Edition)

Mary Ruefle's poems and prose have appeared in Harper's, Best American Poetry, and The Next American Essay. Her many awards include an NEA and a Guggenheim. She is a frequent visiting professor at the University of Iowa, and she lives and teaches in Vermont.

Delectable fables with questionable morals—sweet and sharp and over too soon.

Publishers Weekly

These 31 "stories" from poet Ruefle (Indeed I Was Pleased with the World) are more like brief squibs, close observations and meditations. "Snow," for example, expresses the wondrous and sexual sense of benediction the narrator feels when it snows. "The Diary" appears as a girl's autobiographical reflection on growing up on her father's troubled "diary farm." A cardinal "looking like Santa Claus" seems to mimic the behavior of humans in "My Search Among the Birds." The pieces' brevity and whimsy sometimes veer into single sentiment gags, as when detailing (in "A Certain Swirl") a sentence's sense of abandonment in being left on the blackboard after the class's departure. This collection showcases Ruefle's considerable lyrical powers and memorable flights of fancy. (June)

Snow 13

Camp William 16

Suburb of Long Suffering 18

My Pet, My Clock 19

Hazeline 21

Lichen 22

A Glass of Water 24

Woman With a Yellow Scarf 26

The Bench 29

Monument 32

Beautiful Day 35

My Search Among the Birds 38

The Dart and the Drill 45

The Taking of Moundville by Zoom 47

Hard-Boiled Detective 48

What Woman 50

All My Roe 51

Peek-a-Moose 52

Sleep 53

A Certain Swirl 55

Ascribed This Day to the Affidavit 56

The Diary 57

The Most of It 61

A Romantic Poet and His Destiny 64

If All the World Were Paper 65

A Minor Personal Matter 68

On Twilight 70

University of the Limitless Mouse 71

Some Nondescript Autumn Weekend 73

A Half-Sketched Head 74

Acknowledgments 95