Description: 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.
Brief description: 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.
Review Quotes: "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