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A review by sloatsj
A Little White Shadow by Mary Ruefle
5.0
Wonderful and surprising and often very funny. I adored this book. When I received the book and saw how slim and small it was, I was like, what? I paid $16 for this? But by the end I was ready to surrender much more than that. It brought me so much pleasure.
Found poetry is an acquired taste so I realize this book and others like it aren’t for everyone. I recently told a poet acquaintance over dinner that I was writing found poetry and she could not disguise her distaste. Not that she tried. Smile. Oh well. Five years ago, it seemed an odd pursuit to me, too.
Anyway, Mary Ruefle takes a 41-page pamphlet from 1889 and whites out most of the text to find a short poem on each page, some as short as six words. It’s as if the constraint has freed her. The results seem reckless and weird and are often very funny. The reader is still looking at the original pamphlet but it has been smeared with white-out fluid, somewhat sloppily to be honest, but I found that part of the charm.
One of my favorites, without its ‘format,’ goes:
seven centuries of sobbing
gathered in the twilight
and had their pages
wandered through
Another is the short:
It
was my duty to keep
the piano filled with roses.
Found poetry is an acquired taste so I realize this book and others like it aren’t for everyone. I recently told a poet acquaintance over dinner that I was writing found poetry and she could not disguise her distaste. Not that she tried. Smile. Oh well. Five years ago, it seemed an odd pursuit to me, too.
Anyway, Mary Ruefle takes a 41-page pamphlet from 1889 and whites out most of the text to find a short poem on each page, some as short as six words. It’s as if the constraint has freed her. The results seem reckless and weird and are often very funny. The reader is still looking at the original pamphlet but it has been smeared with white-out fluid, somewhat sloppily to be honest, but I found that part of the charm.
One of my favorites, without its ‘format,’ goes:
seven centuries of sobbing
gathered in the twilight
and had their pages
wandered through
Another is the short:
It
was my duty to keep
the piano filled with roses.