“It is impossible for me to write about the imagination; it is like asking a fish to describe the sea,” claims poet Mary Ruefle on the first page of this chapbook-length essay. Through her unique blend of anecdotes and meditations upon subjects ranging from John Keats to Jesus to the Ukrainian art of Easter egg dyeing, Ruefle manages to demonstrate that the act of writing is much more than the solitary task it can sometimes feel like—it is a collaboration between yourself and the world. “The imagination is not what you play with, the imagination plays with you.”
