One of the wisest books I've read in years, and it would be a shame to think that only poets will read it."David Kirby, The New York Times Book Review, on Madness, Rack, and Honey"What a civil, undomesticable, and heartening poet is Mary Ruefle . . . any Ruefle poem is an occasion of resonant wit and language, subject to an exacting intelligence."Rodney Jones, Poetry Society of America, William Carlos Williams Award citationTrances of the Blast is a major new collection from recent National Book Critics Circle Award finalist Mary Ruefle. Full of Ruefle's particular wisdom and wit, the poems deliver her imaginative take on the world's riftsits paradoxes, failures, and lossand help us better appreciate its redeeming strangeness.If only I'd understood that loneliness was just loneliness, only loneliness and nothing more. The dust cover is slightly soiled, but otherwise the book is clean and sound. But I was blind. Little did I know. If only I'd invented salt. I might have died happy. I