Mary Ruefle's "Personalia"
Thoughts on dying to live.
Personalia
When I was young, a fortune-teller told me that an old woman who wanted to die had accidentally become lodged in my body. Slowly, over time, and taking great care in following esoteric instructions, including laven- der baths and the ritual burial of keys in the backyard, I rid myself of her presence. Now I am an old woman who wants to die and lodged inside me is a young woman dy- ing to live; I work on her. from My Private Property (Wave Books, 2016)
I wrote about Mary Ruefle’s poetry over two years ago, and in that post, I told a story about Mary Ruefle that I will tell again, because two years feels like an appropriate amount of time between the telling of the same story, which is, by the way — the telling of the same story, I mean — one of my favorite things about a friendship, the way so much of any friendship consists of repeating the same story to one another over the years, as if you are re-reading a book for an entire lifetime, passing it back and forth, forever recommending it. I love this part, one of you says. Me too, one of you says.
Anyways, my Mary Ruefle story. I was in grad school, and Mary Ruefle was visiting, and one night she sat down with Marie Howe for a craft talk and conversation. I arrived late, and sat on the floor near the back of the room, which was a small room, though cozy. It was packed. I remember one thing from that conversation, which was that Marie Howe asked Mary Ruefle a question that went something like: what is the saddest thing you’ve ever seen? She may not have asked that question, but I think she did. Either way, Mary Ruefle gave her answer. And I think about her answer all of the time.
Mary Ruefle told a story about riding a train to New York City along the Hudson, down from Albany or Poughkeepsie. If you’ve ever ridden that train line before — whether on Metro North or Amtrak — then you know that it’s an absolutely lovely train ride, especially in mid to late fall, when the trees are a million smattering shades of orange, and the light upon the water is essentially its own liquid thing, and the train itself glides so close to the river’s edge that you may as well be moving by virtue of some miracle. And Mary Ruefle was looking out the window, though she was sitting in the aisle seat. And the light was doing its special little thing when it transforms from air to liquid, and lays itself down flat upon the water, shimmering like oil in a transparent blue glass. And Mary Ruefle said that the person next to her, who she had to look past in order to see the river and the light, was on their computer, shopping for something online, and that they never once looked out the window. And she said it was one of the saddest things she’d ever seen.
I love that story because it is gentle, aware, sad, and ordinary. I love it because it has never left me, and because it probably all happened different than I remember, and because, even so, it is now a story I tell myself over and over again. I am telling that story to myself right now, as I type this, where it is early morning on a Saturday, and where it has just snowed, and where I am riding a southbound train from New York City, and where I am sitting beside the window, typing maybe a few words every ten minutes, because I can’t stop leaning my head against the glass, watching the train kick up the just-fallen snow from the tracks, so that it rushes up into the air like a cloud that disappears the moment the sunlight shines right through it. And I am reading Mary Ruefle and thinking of the saddest thing she’d ever seen and wondering if most of growing old is the refusal to give in to the desire to turn away, the desire to turn back to something that is not the many-speckled trees covered with snow, shining in the sun like daylight stars, constellations seen through a microscope, and then expanded.
Today’s poem contains one of my favorite moments of Mary Ruefle’s poetry:
Now I am an old woman who wants to die and lodged inside me is a young woman dy- ing to live; I work on her.
There is something so playfully conveyed about the deep sadness of childhood in this poem, and then the adult longing for such childhood after it is over. It is existential, this sadness. And it lives with us in different ways as we go on living our lives.
This poem offers, too, many definitions of a life. Here’s one:
Slowly, over time, and taking great care in following esoteric instructions, including laven- der baths and the ritual burial of keys in the backyard, I rid myself of her presence.
Here, what is life if not the slow, careful work of trying to live despite a sorrow that lives in us? And then, at the poem’s end, what is life if not the choice to remember — and cherish — the person we once were?
It is unclear if the poem’s final sentence — I work on her — is meant to convey that the speaker is working on ridding herself of that child who wants to live, or if the speaker is working on valuing that child. When I read the poem with a tinge of sorrow, I think of the former, and when I read it with hope — as I am reading it today — I think of the latter.
But if I were to consider the former desire — that decision to try and rid ourselves of the child that lives inside of us, then I’d be reminded of a short story by Lydia Davis, “The Mother,” that I can’t help thinking about when I think of this poem. Here it is, in full:
The girl wrote a story. “But how much better it would be if you wrote a novel,” said her mother. The girl built a dollhouse. “But how much better if it were a real house,” her mother said. The girl made a small pillow for her father. “But wouldn’t a quilt be more practical,” said her mother. The girl dug a small hole in the garden. “But how much better if you dug a large hole,” said her mother. The girl dug a hole and went to sleep in it. “But how much better if you slept forever,” said her mother.
Brutal, that ending. Absolutely awful. But yes — here, in this story, are two living embodiments of the characters of Ruefle’s poem today: the child who wants to live and the old woman who wants to die. And the child keeps insisting on making, and creating, and imagining, and the mother keeps insisting on limiting, correcting, and then, finally, erasing.
One of the things I value the most about Ruefle’s poetry is that it reads, always, like it is written by a child who wants to live. By that, I mean that it insists on playing, and relating, and making both sense and nonsense at the same time. It’s there in lines like these, from “Super Bowl,” one of my favorite poems of hers:
Who won? I said. The game’s tomorrow, he said. And I became the snail I always was, crossing the field in my helmet.
It’s hard not to love this — for its honesty, for its cheeky self-deprecation, and for the image it places in your head, that little snail crossing that big field.
And Ruefle’s childishness is there, too, in the fact that the book that poem is from is titled Dunce, the reason for which she alludes to in an interview when asked “What's something you would have liked to have known when you first started taking your writing seriously?” Here’s Ruefle’s response:
What an idiot I was. Hence Dunce. That I was embarking on a life of duncedom.
And it’s there, too, in a poem like “Crackerbell,” which begins:
I grew up I became myself and was haunted by it and I loved to wander, utterly alone
And then ends:
and at once I felt there are so many years to fail that to fail them all, one by one, would give me a double life, and I took it.
Here is the self as someone willing to wander, to be incorrect, to fail. Here is the self as dying to live. To read Mary Ruefle is to learn how to insist on valuing that part of us, that child who longs to live. To learn how to be a dunce — playful, wrong, beautiful. And to learn how to work on that dunce-ness, that wrong-ness, if work means cherish.
One of my favorite things about being teacher is seeing this kind of playfulness every day — from kids and adults alike. And one of the hardest parts about being a teacher is realizing, with a sudden sharp pain, when I have un-cherished that child who lives inside of me, sending him away in favor of quick correction, urgency, and a kind of status quo blandness that erases the imagination.
But sometimes, walking through the halls, I’ll feel and experience a litany of boundless joy and strangeness. I’m thinking of one of my favorite fellow teachers, who has this deep, deep, deep laugh that comes from way down in her soul, the kind of laugh that can move through any door or wall that separates the two of us. I’ll hear her laughing, and I’ll laugh, too. I’ll hear her laughing, and I’ll pop into her room, where she is referring to the Great Depression as the Big Sad, doubled over while she does it, the kids laughing, too — at the joke, at the transcendent quality of her laughter, and at being in the presence of someone so willing to be themselves. It’s funny, how joy is so often something we stumble upon rather than look for, how we are surprised by it even in places where it should flourish — a building full of kids, a sunlit train along the river.
I don’t know what to make of that. We spend so much time burying parts of ourselves that I don’t really have to wonder how Ruefle’s speaker would “rid [her]self” of the presence of that child who wants to live. There’s a scene in Toni Morrison’s Sula where Nel and Sula, as kids, dig a hole and bury things in it:
Each then looked around for more debris to throw into the hole: paper, bits of glass, butts of cigarettes, until all of the small defiling things they could find were collected there.
Here, it’s as if Morrison is saying that part of growing up means hiding the most “defiling” parts of ourselves. And I think growing up has also sadly come to mean putting so much more of ourselves in that hole, too — our capacity for joy, the sound of our laugh — until nearly everything that makes up who we are — our personalia, one might say — is associated with shame rather than joy. Unbury the child, I say. See what they have say. Listen to the sound of their laugh.
Some ongoing notes:
I am really excited to be teaching an online class with the Adirondack Center for Writers (thank you, Tyler Barton) on getting away from a prescriptive language when it comes to reading and writing poetry. We’ll read a bunch; we’ll write a bunch; we’ll talk a bunch. It’ll start in February. If you’re interested, here’s the link to register. And here’s a class description: A poem is an offering. In this five-week class, poet and critic Devin Kelly will introduce students to a language of generosity for modern poetry. Instead of talking prescriptively about a poem’s quality (“good” or “bad”), students will take an expansive and holistic approach to engaging with poetry and crafting their own. Works by Larry Levis, Mary Oliver, Ross Gay, W.S. Merwin, and many others will serve as models for developing and practicing what Kelly calls “a vocabulary of grace”. Think of a poem as a window, a room, or a landscape—something that expands the more you pay attention to it. Students will discuss and write new poems weekly, and twice over the course of five weeks everyone will receive one-on-one feedback from Kelly on their work.
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