Hadara Bar-Nadav, in American Review, insists that Mary Ruefle is “at her best . . . wry, edgy, and infinitely surprising,” an assessment echoed by reviewers of the poems collected in Post Meridian. A review of the collection in Publishers Weekly states that the collection contains “elegantly worked poems” that slip “behind screens of language, dazzling the reader.” Noting the sometimes obscure nature of her work, the reviewer explains, “within the poems, Ruefle concocts circular patterns of sound that seduce the reader away from the hunt for logical development.” Yet, the review concludes, “Readers will find ample verbal threads here for their own happy picking.”

Mark Halliday, in his review of the collection, also comments on Ruefle’s obscurity, insisting that the first poem, “Perfect Reader,” stands as “a warning” to readers as they...