Rubble Masonry is a collection of lyric essays that takes its title from the practice of stone masons who, rather than using materials cut to ideal measurements, work with found rocks' natural shapes. It combines the rich images and musical language of poetry with prose's capacity to share personal narratives and information from wide-ranging sources. Diverse content and innovative form distinguish a book that explores the places in which its author, Rose McLarney, finds herself as a woman from the mountain South-in history, national dialogues, public spaces, the natural world, and lineages that extend beyond an individual's life on earth.

About the Author
Rose McLarney's collections of poems are Colorfast, Forage, Its Day Being Gone, and The Always Broken Plates of Mountains. She is coeditor of A Literary Field Guide to Southern Appalachia and the Southern Humanities Review. McLarney is Lanier Endowed Professor of Creative Writing at Auburn University.

Reviews

"These compact and lyrical essays could have been written by no one save Rose McLarney. Her training in poetry-a pitch-perfect ear and metaphoric virtuosity-serves her investigation of expansive and braided topics in an original and fascinating book." - Beth Ann Fennelly, author of Heating & Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs

"What a set list of musings in Rubble Masonry, with its peerless nuance and quirks! Peep the terrain of McLarney's wide and mighty curiosity. Rubble Masonry is impressively splendid." - Rodney Terich Leonard, author of Sweetgum & Lightning

"Reading Rubble Masonry, I was inundated by new possibility. I relearned, loving the new possibilities for the lyric 'I,' just as, like McLarney, I wondered, 'What can I come closer to calling mine?' A spellbinding read; I am full of praise." - Sally Keith, author of Two of Everything

"This collection of startling, deeply original linked essays, with their lush, specific imagery and high-flying associative leaps, provides a meditation on the past in an attempt to understand the bewildering present. Rubble Masonry provides a space for contemplation-and, ultimately, for renewal." - Charlotte Pence, author of Code

Book Information
ISBN 9780807185896
Author Rose McLarney
Format Paperback
Page Count 192
Imprint Louisiana State University Press
Publisher Louisiana State University Press
Dimensions(mm) 11mm * 140mm * 216mm