Not yet read; inspiration to read: NYT Magazine 11.18.15, back page interview with Mary Karr. She counts this among her top 5 books about writing.

Fantastic ( )

Mary Ruefle hits some nails on the head in this collection of essays. My first encounter with her work, poetry or otherwise, I didn't know what to expect and was delighted to find variety of lectures, creative, provocative, and full of so much damn wit! She is willing to wrestle, admit ignorance, and be contradictory in a way that is both evocative of an actual thought-process and in service of a more intuitive understanding. She includes some personal essays, such as "I remember, I remember" which don't feel disjointed in the collection but provide a demonstration of her range as a prose writer. ( )

I never wanted it to end - thought-provoking, inspiring and always wise. ( )

Mary Ruefle’s dazzling and idiosyncratic Madness, Rack, and Honey is the freshest and most startling piece of criticism I have read in a long time. The book is billed as “collected lectures,” with titles such as “Poetry and the Moon” and “On Fear,” but they have about as much in common with the standard academic lecture as spicy homemade salsa does with ketchup. Ruefle’s voice is rangy and intellectually supple, capable of conjuring with the knottiest questions of identity and narrative in one breath and then swooping to the personal or lyrical in the next. Especially tonic is the author’s impatience with stodgy, unquestioned verities or lazy thinking in general; at times, she bristles with exasperation. About Emily Dickinson, she writes, “I would no more tell you about my relationship with her poems than I would tell you about a love affair. If she is yours, I hope you feel the same way,” a critical tactic I am not sure I have ever encountered before but that I find delightful.

From the Washington Post, February 20, 2013 ( )