46 Quotes by Mary Ruefle

If you have any idea for a poem, an exact grid of intent, you are on the wrong path, a dead-end alley, at the top of a cliff you haven’t even climbed. This is a lesson that can only be learned by trial and error.

Metaphor is not, and never has been, a mere literary term. It is an event.

In our marginal existence, what else is there but this voice within us, this great weirdness we are always leaning forward to listen to?

I’m lucky enough to occasionally be able to do something I love – write poems – and unlucky enough that what I love confuses and overwhelms me.

Irreverence is a way of playing hooky and remaining present at the same time.

There is a world which poets cannot seem to enter. It is the world everybody else lives in. And the only thing poets seem to have in common is their yearning to enter this world.

People, the people we really love, where did they come from? What did we do to deserve them?

Poetry is sentimental to begin with. To write a sentimental poem is an act of redundancy.

Every creative act is an act of hypocrisy and violence. You may have to think about it for a while, but I am sure you can discover your own.