Description
Poetry. "Reading the poems in COMPULSIVE WORDS is like taking a hard drug."—Aaron Kiely
"Michael Ruby's new book is experienced as a kind of sotto voce diction, an unrelenting mumbling in the back of the mind, which takes two very different forms: as a graphic representation of voices (words presented in diagrammatic patterns), and as what might be 'transcriptions' of those diagrams and patterns: 'O paper placement machines/Blue ladder to family problems' or 'Somnabulist prows to leaven/Healthy escarole.' Or perhaps the diagrams are transcriptions of the other texts: the tense dialectic between these two poles is one of the things that makes this book well worth contemplating."—John M. Bennett
On January 29, 1999, my older brother was near death in a Boston hospital after emergency surgery for a blood clot in the abdomen. As I sat near the phone in Brooklyn that morning, trying to type up an old manuscript, it suddenly occurred to me that I was experiencing an extreme emotion, dread, and that I should see which words this extreme emotion displaced in my mind. While writing the poem "Dread," I perceived certain words repeatedly appearing, forcing themselves on me, taking over the poem. From then on, during composition, I noticed the appearance of these "compulsive words," which I first collected in the poem COMPULSIVE WORDS in 2000, and whose number has continued to grow ever since.—Michael Ruby
Author Bio
Michael Handler Ruby is the author of five other full-length poetry collections: At an Intersection (Alef Books, 2002), WINDOW ON THE CITY (BlazeVOX [books], 2006), THE EDGE OF THE UNDERWORLD (BlazeVOX [books], 2010), COMPULSIVE WORDS (BlazeVOX [books], 2010) and AMERICAN SONGBOOK (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2013); and a trilogy in prose and poetry, MEMORIES, DREAMS AND INNER VOICES (Station Hill Press, 2012), which includes two ebooks, Fleeting Memories (UDP, 2008) and Inner Voices Heard Before Sleep (Argotist Online, 2011). He is also the author of two other poetry ebooks, Titles & First Lines (Mudlark, 2018) and Close Your Eyes (Argotist, 2018), and four Dusie Kollektiv chapbooks, including The Star-Spangled Banner (2011). He is the co-editor of Bernadette Mayer's collected early books, EATING THE COLORS OF A LINEUP OF WORDS (Station Hill, 2015). A graduate of Harvard College and Brown University's writing program, he lives in Brooklyn and works as an editor of U.S. news and political articles at The Wall Street Journal.
Author City: BROOKLYN, NY USA