Winner of the 1997 Mississippi
Institute of Arts and Letters
Poetry Award
Circling
(poems)
1996
"Paul Ruffin has as much to tell us as we
have ears to hear, and he tells it in a
voice that pretends not to know about
lines and music and resolution. It's a
voice for everyone who reads English, a
voice with which he makes poems-
poems-
poetry. There would be fewer such
people if more people knew the poetry of
Paul Ruffin." (Miller Williams, Contest
Judge)
A masterful storyteller, Paul Ruffin
proves himself in Circling to be a rare
lyricist as well. These are powerful
poems that challenge a reader's emo-
tions. While crafted with deep knowl-
edge of the past, Ruffin's poems carry
the fresh scent of open land, rather than
the smell of the library. -
"Paul Ruffin's Circling is a collection of
poems mostly about country life, farm-
ing, and fishing,and while the bucolic
mode is hardly new, Ruffin gives it to us
vividly and with an earned authenticity
that makes it as fresh as it was when
Theocritus and Virgil dreamed it up."
(David Slavitt, Dictionary of Literary
Biography, 1996)
"The poems are full of moments of grace, as when a child experiences
for the first and only time walking on a frozen pond in Mississippi, or
when the farmer apologizes to a fruit tree for severing its feeder roots
in order to make it bear fruit." (Robert Phillips, Houston Chronicle)
"Here's a beautiful book, with some strong, broad-
written with clarity, insight, and a sense of wonder about the good
old ways-
postage stamp lots in cities-
Small Press Review)
"Paul Ruffin's fine collection of poems, his fourth, is the genuine
article. These are wonderful poems of the everyday world-
about fishing, raising cattle, living in a family. Ruffin, a master of the
narrative lyric, has written a collection of poems that are believable,
more believable than much of what is being written today." (Michael
Lieberman, Tar River Review)
ISBN: 0-
