The Most of It - Mary Ruefle

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Most of It by Poet Mary Ruefle is her first book of prose. Quirky and surprising assessments of commonplace things beginning with snow which awakens her desire for sex and ending with burial and comments on the tombs of Jesus and of King Tut. In between she comments on killing, dying, lichen, birds, religion, housekeeping and a potpourri of thoughts from an anchorite on lists, penance, prayer, Shakespeare, news, books, rabbits and mistaken facts. The book defies description but yields similes and smiles. And I read and reread in a kind of calisthenics of the mind.

"Soon the trains, too, shall pass out of all being, while books, I'm afraid, will go on pretending the are still among us. My friend--for nothing hinders me from calling you my friend, especially the fact we have never met, and are only now pretending to--if all the world were made of paper, and perhaps it is, it could one day conceivably burn for year, like the rainforests of Brazil were once so fond of doing, and eventually we'd be reduced to a few square heaps of ash, as if the sun had strayed too close, or one among us drifted too far, the sensitivity of his organs of perception so extreme he regarded all of civilization and most of literature, an illusion."

Just pick it up and read a few opening sentences of the short pieces which make up the book:
"This morning I want to talk a little bit about killing."
"Fire is my companion, but I do not talk to it, it talks to me."
"A pet is a good way to tell time, better than a clock, for time is a measure of the changing position of objects, and soon it will be time to feed the pet, to exercise the pet, to replace its little ball, clip its nails or talons, wash it ever so gently, vaccuum up its shedding and so forth."
"After father died, he said that dying had taken a longer time than he had previously imagined possible."
"I wanted to go into the forest and collect lichen."
"Remove everything beautiful from your home, remove everything you like, love, cherish or are fond of."

See what I mean? Unexpected and compelling.

View all my reviews