The following conversation occurred in person at the 2020 Bergen International Literary Festival. The text was transcribed by Lucie Goodhart and has been lightly edited for concision and clarity.
Ida Lødemel Tvedt: What do you feel, being at a literature festival and talking about poetry but not writing it at the moment?
Mary Ruefle: It is an unspeakable honor to have been invited and an unspeakable honor to be here, to travel to Norway, and to be in Bergen. It’s an unspeakable honor. At the same time, I would rather be home alone in my writing room with the door closed. Does that make sense? I’m very happy to be here, but always, my first choice of place and being is to be alone with a book, or a piece of paper and a pen.
Do you think that the solitude required for poetry is in any way threatened by the world of literary events?
Increasingly yes, but one can control that. I mean, I can say no. You learn to say no—well, many people, especially many women, have difficulty saying no—and it gets easier as you get older. I’ve become much better at saying no. It’s hard to learn that, but you learn. After someone in Oslo invited me to go to Oslo, they found out I was in Bergen and so to them it was like, well, you’re here, come to Oslo. And I thought about it and I said, oh, that’s too much, that’s just overwhelming. And I said, no, it’s about Bergen. All of my energy is to Bergen, I don’t want to divide it with Oslo. Bye-bye!
You have a longstanding interest in the North. You haven’t been to Scandinavia before, but you have been interested in the Arctic…
A longstanding life interest in the Arctic, and not only in indigenous culture. White exploration and the whole history.
So even though you live in snowy Vermont, you pine for the fjords.
No no no, I like to read about it sitting in front of the fire with a blanket. Wherever I travel, I like to take literature which comes from the opposite place in the world, so I would take a book about the Arctic to Africa and a book about Africa to the Arctic. I like that juxtaposition.
Mary Ruefle, courtesy of the Bergen International Literary Festival.
The desire to say no, learning how to say no, is very present in your poetry as well. Maybe this is me projecting, but I see a recurrence in your work of women who have secluded themselves in order to write. Not just women, but a lot of women who retreat or who say no in order to work, to be free and think. Am I right in seeing a theme there?
Yes.
What is that about?
I have always made sure there was room for solitude in my life. But not consciously. It was only later, looking back, that I saw the decisions that I made had to do with that. But at the time, when I was twenty-two years old and I chose to stay in the country while my friends were going to the city… What was that about? I didn’t, at that time, understand, but later I did. I have made hard choices, I have given up, I think, a lot of opportunity to make sure I had the time I needed in order to be.
Because creativity without solitude is…
It’s just me. I’m only always speaking for myself. I have friends who are poets, wonderful poets, and they can only write in noisy cafes. I mean, anything goes, but you have to find out for yourself. Are you someone who is fed by community or are you someone who is fed by solitude? And you have to decide for yourself. I can tell an anecdote about that. I have a dear friend who’s a poet and who happens to be my dear editor. We were talking—and neither of us went to graduate school, and neither of us pursued, well, you know—and when he graduated he said, I want to be a writer and I know this. Therefore I am moving—in his case, he’s American—to New York City, and I am going to hang out with artists and writers. I am going to meet them and hang out with them and that’s how you be a writer. And that’s exactly what he did. He knows everyone. He is amazing. And I said at the same age (we didn’t know each other), I want to be a writer, so I’m going to move into a tiny cottage in the middle of nowhere and write and shut myself off. And we both ended up in the same place. That’s amazing to me, just two different directions.
So maybe it is the choice of a way of life that serves the poetry, that’s the point. Not the kind of life, but saying, Well, this is what I’m doing in order to do that.
Well, then I hear his story and I think, That’s what I should have done!
Really? No, you don’t think that, do you?
Sometimes, but it’s too late now. My life’s basically over.
But you teach?
I taught. I don’t teach now, I did.
And how did that inform your work, having to deal with all these youngsters with aspirations, wanting to be famous and make money off their poetry?
Madness, Rack, and Honey
by Mary Ruefle
(Wave Books, Aug. 2012)
I learned by doing. I learned to become articulate in talking about poetry to them. Had I not taught, there would have been no need for me to have to articulate thoughts and feelings and ideas and knowledge about poetry. The book Madness, Rack, and Honey came out of that experience. I did not set out to write that book. I did not want to, I did not plan to, but I was required to deliver lectures to a group of graduate students. It was a requirement, otherwise I would lose my job, and it terrified me but I did it, and out of that experience came that book. So I am very thankful for that. I am very thankful for that.
The book she is talking about is a series of lectures which, ironically, is the best seller, and it’s not poetry.
In a nutshell, the book basically says people would rather talk about poetry and hear other people talk about poetry than read it. And the book that says that has sold more copies than any book of poetry that I’ve ever written. It’s an amusing fact.
Maybe you would like to read a little bit from an essay so at least we are organizing ourselves around written words.
This is an essay called “My Private Property.” Every word of it’s true, this is not made up.
[At this point in the program, Ruefle read the entirety of “My Private Property,” the full text of which appears online at The Kenyon Review.]
Mary Ruefle (left) with Teresa Grøtan at St. George’s Leprosy Museum (Lepramuseet) in Bergen. Courtesy of the Bergen International Literary Festival.
That’s amazing. It makes a mockery out of anything that can happen in a conversation and proves our point—the written word is superior. I don’t even know where to begin after that, it’s got everything in it. It’s got all of the topics I wanted to talk about: fear, humor, the movement toward death. It’s got sweetness and care. Nietzsche said, The measure of intelligence in a person is how afraid they are of something. And you also say something about fear, namely, the poet is not afraid because she’s always afraid, which seems relevant to the theme of horror or absurdity as you begin to realize what The Congo Museum is really about. I guess my question is: What is the role of dread or fear or horror when you are writing these things?
Damned if I know. I’m not afraid to face fear. You’re using the word fear and I’m suddenly thinking, There’s an essay that I want to write. I don’t know if I will, but I have a pile of notes and I want to write an essay on sadness, but I think it’s related. But I’m not changing the subject because I have many friends, wonderful people, who cannot bear sad films, sad cinema, and sad books. They won’t read them. And they won’t watch these films. I don’t understand their aversion. Sadness and violence… Some of the things they are pushing away are actually quite innocent. I have never, ever been afraid of sadness. I’ve never been afraid of sadness; I can read anything, I can watch anything. There’s no such thing as something being too sad for me, but I’m talking about art, okay, so don’t misunderstand me. I’m not saying I’m attracted to horrific things in the world. They’re horrific, evil is real, and I recognize them as evil, but I don’t want to shut that out of my life. I want to remain aware of it at all times, which probably sounds surprising if you really know my work because my work is completely apolitical. I am not known as a political writer at all…
Fear. I’m speaking too personally. Every year of my life I read a holocaust memoir, every year of my life. I have people who think I’m insane for that and I don’t, you know?—
I am not afraid of death, but I am afraid of physical pain that is often involved in dying. Does that make sense? I am not afraid of death at all, you know? I’m afraid of dying, but not death. You can kind of dissect moments of fear, you know, like that. So I don’t know… Do I write about fear as if I’m afraid?
No, you write as if you’re interested and as if it’s something that’s necessary in order to be intelligent and in the world.
Yes, you can’t pretend it’s not there. When you’re young, part of your life’s journey is finding out what you love—but also finding out what you are afraid of, and also finding out what you do not like, because that’s the journey of life. Find what you love, what you do not love, and what you’re afraid of, because knowing those things will help you find that place where you want to be, where you are able to be engaged in the activities you love the most, and getting rid of the things that you don’t like to do—but that for cultural reasons or family reasons or personal reasons you feel you have to. And learning what you’re afraid of, and then staying away from it, or overcoming your fear and no longer being afraid of it, if that makes sense. Overcome your fear and no longer be afraid of it.
Dunce
by Mary Ruefle
(Wave Books, Oct. 2019)
I think it’s that fearlessness as well as what you described as not being afraid of being sad that makes your book so funny. I’ve laughed so much with these books… You know, Jerry Seinfield says somewhere that poetry is just stand-up without punchlines. I think about that when I read you. Your poetry has got an aspect of stand-up to it.
I am no longer afraid to be stupid. If you think you’re stupid, you’re not. Don’t be afraid. My new book is called Dunce. It’s a celebration of stupidity. I am no longer afraid, there’s nothing to be afraid of, it’s okay!
Ida Lødemel Tvedt writes essays and reviews for Norwegian newspapers and journals. She splits her time between Bergen and New York, where she has taught classes on the literary essay at Columbia University and The New School. She currently writes for the newspaper Dag og tid.
Mary Ruefle is the author of many books, including Dunce (2019), My Private Property (2016), Trances of the Blast (2013), Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures (2012), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism, and Selected Poems (2010), winner of the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America. She lives in Bennington, Vermont.
Banner: Mary Ruefle with Ida Lødemel Tvedt, Courtesy of the Bergen International Literary Festival.