'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 citation Trances 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 rifts--its paradoxes, failures, and loss--and help us better appreciate its redeeming strangeness. If only I'd understood that loneliness was just loneliness, only loneliness and nothing more. But I was blind. Little did I know. If only I'd invented salt. I might have died happy. I wish I loved you, but you can't have everything. Mary Ruefle is the