16 pages • 32 minutes read
Mary RuefleThe Hand
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1996A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Literary Context
Mary Ruefle’s work can be compared to that of contemporaries Mary Oliver, Sharon Olds, Anne Sexton, and Dean Young.
Dean Young’s poetry often depicts deeply observed moments of the everyday akin to those of Ruelfe’s. For instance, “Interference & Delivery” (1998) uses a quiet precision to describe a difficult phone call between two longtime friends. This calls to mind the silent rebellion of a student ignoring a teacher in class in “The Hand” or an audience member falling asleep at a symphony in “Lullaby” (2013). Supporting this connection, Ruefle’s 2000 book of poetry, Post Meridian, even contains the dedication, “for Dean.”
Mary Oliver’s poems link to Ruefle’s through their reverence and love for nature. Just as “The Hand” offers a vision of nature in the robin who ruffles its feathers in the spring air to a student who is tired of class, so too does Oliver’s “What Is It?” (1990) connect people to moments in nature that give greater meaning to beauty, life, and change.
Historical Context
In a review of Ruefle’s book, Post Meridian, Lisa Beskin wrote: “Like John Ashbery and James Tate, Mary Ruefle investigates the multiplicities and frailties of being with an associative inventiveness and a lightness of touch.” This particular approach to poetry is reminiscent of the New York School of Poets, including John Ashbery. The Poetry Foundation describes the New York School in “An Introduction to the New York School of Poets” as “witty, urbane, and conversational,” elements, which Ruefle also carries in her poetry and prose. “The Hand” offers the trademark wit that also appears in much of Ruefle’s other work, and a conversational quality—an almost casual directness woven together with her use of symbolism and metaphor—much as the poets of the New York School did.
Ruefle belongs to the contemporary period, or contemporary era, in literature, which began in the mid-1940’s and extends into the present day. It is difficult to define by many other terms, as it features an explosion of styles, topics, and thought. One unifying tendency of contemporary poets is the poetic technique of using variations on standard rhyme and variations on consistent lines, favoring free verse and not following any consistent meter, rhyme, or line length.
This time period was marked by significant cultural shifts like the Women’s Liberation Movement and the Civil Rights Movement, as well as by the multi-decade Cold War between the USSR and the US. The gradual dissolution of patriarchal, Western, and colonial standards during this time brought a pushback against past ideas of what art and literature should be, and a total reinvention and explosion of style, theory, and practice.
