Tom Ruud's first poetry collection, Unable for the World to Sleep, builds like a memoir. It is a life story told with intelligence and wit—and the mythological and historical references we anticipate from a classically educated author.

In praising Ruud's work, Margaret Hasse (author, In a Sheep's Eye, Darling) advises readers who are in search of poems "constructed of precise words.... that are smart with allusion and wit, but never stiff or show-offy,'' to look no further than Unable for the World to Sleep. Here, writes Hasse, "You will find poems that conjure through myth and legend, sepia photographs and childhood stories, old wounds of the body and of the heart—yet the poems tremble "in the good present tense.''

Praise for Unable for the World to Sleep

It seems it is impossible for Tom Ruud to write a line of poetry that doesn't sing with intelligence. His is a poetry that lives in the joyous and heartbreaking places that a truly unblinkered intelligence will take you.
—Jim Moore, author of Lightning at Dinner

In his first collection of poems, Tom Ruud claims his place as a brilliantt, soulful American poet... This is a poet who reveres language, and loves our beautiful, broken world. We are fortunate to hold his book in our hands.
—Deborah Keenan, author of Good Heart

A poet of wide compass, special gifts—for the animals called into our lives, their "uninstructed ecstasy," for winter, translating the sky's trouble into inwardness," and for moments of refreshment when even a park bench feels the lovers' heat, "on cool evening planks.''
—Margot Galt, author of Between the Houses