Mary Ruefle: On Secrets: Eight Beginnings, Two Ends (July 2007)

In this “lecture on secrets which is secretly about poetry,” Mary Ruefle explores how literature has dealt with secrets over time, and how the act of writing is itself private and, in a sense, secretive.  Reflecting on the correspondences between the secretive and the sacred, as well as between what is secret and what is playful, Ruefle considers a range of texts through this lens, including Out of Africa by Isak Dineson, The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald, and poems by Artur Lundkvist, Tomas Tranströmer, and Heraclitus.