Ruffin Ready

Abstract

Ruffin Ready Joseph D. Haske (bio) Paul Ruffin: New and Selected Poems. Paul Ruffin. TCU Press. http://www.prs.tcu.edu. 96 pages; cloth, $15.95. A prolific and accomplished writer, editor, and publisher, Paul Ruffin's contribution to American letters, so far, includes two novels, three collections of short stories, three books of essays, and over a half dozen collections of poetry, including his recent compilation from the Texas Poet Laureate Series, Paul Ruffin: New and Selected Poems. Ruffin's collections The Man Who Would Be God (1993); Islands, Women, and God (2001); and Jesus in the Mist (2007) are among the best in American short fiction in recent history. In reading Ruffin's complete works, one finds that many of the characteristics that make his fiction so appealing carry over into his poetry. There exist few cases where exceptional fiction writers excel in verse, attaining the same level of skill with their poetry—Thomas Hardy comes to mind—but it is truly a rare accomplishment. Ruffin is one writer who certainly comes close to achieving this feat. His most recent book, Paul Ruffin: New and Selected Poems, from the TCU Texas Poet Laureate Series, reminds us of his versatility as a writer. He is that rare poet, reminiscent of Robert Frost, who effectively merges a lyrical, stylistic tradition with cognitive and metaphysical innovation. He translates his ability as a prose stylist into verse, creating profound narrative poetry that both tells a story and reveals some clever insight or knowledge, often through simple, unexpected figurative devices and imagery. There is a continuity between the genres as some themes and metaphors recur in both fiction and verse, thematically linking the greater body of his writing. For example, the utilization of the well as a figurative device, which we see in the story, "The Well" resurfaces in the poem "Cleaning the Well." In verse form, the reader witnesses the storyline's re-emergence, as the speaker is lowered into the well by his grandfather and The sky hovered like some pale moon above, eclipsed by his heavy red face bellowing down to me not to dally, to feel deep and load the bucket. As evident in these lines, Ruffin's poetry tends to build on the ordinary, presenting familiar, sometimes mundane, images and offering a twist that transports readers to the realm of the unfamiliar, surprising the reader along the way. The simple imagery ventures into the profound as revelation emerges from unexpected sources. The grandfather in the poem understands that, in the well, "There's always something down there you can't quite get in your hands. You'd know that if it wasn't your first trip down. You'll know from now on." Once again, the well, as a metaphor, provides insight to Ruffin's literal and figurative world. Just as the speaker descends into the darkness of the well, Ruffin, too, descends into dark territory. The well represents, in one sense, the deepest, darkest areas of the human psyche and a collective fear for the unspoken–the macabre hidden truths of our society. Just as the boy feels a sense of duty to descend, Ruffin also seems obligated to take the reader there, whether it is the bottom of a well, a fire at a retirement home, or the mind of a prostitute. In much of his work, Ruffin reveals the primal nature of humankind, examining the beast within us. One can educate oneself and convey a semblance of decorum, but people from all walks of society cannot escape the truth about what we truly are. Erudition and civility are superficial qualities; when all is said and done, we are all animals. We are ultimately motivated by nature and our biological urges, as the speaker reminds us in "To the Celibate": beyond the riches of this cloister, you are bone and flesh, designed to breed and die, no less than the purest holy man, no more than the lowly oyster. In poems such as this, Ruffin brings uncomfortable, and sometimes unpopular, truths about human nature and societal values to light, in a way that most poets dare not. If such works make a reader uneasy, perhaps this...