Ruth Maus Reading at Barnes & Noble

Ruth Maus enjoyed a warm reception at Barnes & Noble in Topeka on Saturday, December 14. Ruth read from Valentine, a finalist in the 2019 Birdy Poetry Prize competition. Valentine is available to order wherever you buy books. 

Barnes & Noble
IndieBound.org
Meadowlark Books
or purchase direct from the author

There’s a feistiness to Ruth Maus’s Valentine that I love—not irreverence or contrarianism for its own sake, but a dissatisfaction with dominant perspectives. Look at the world again from this angle, the poems insist: How does it feel to be a fossil? Don’t people play possum, too? What makes you think Humpty Dumpty wasn’t a girl? Maus poses these sneakily metaphysical questions and then proceeds to answer them, with brio and poise, in the most extravagantly musical language.

-Eric McHenry, author of Odd Evening, Poet Laureate of Kansas, 2015-2017