After the nest arrives empty, after the job starts sucking, after the students' faces start blurring together—there's technique, and Maura Way has got it. These poems are wise, genial, witty, and sharp as acid rain. They sing hard through American heartache.

—Catherine Wagner, author of Of Course

In Mummery, all the world’s a stage. Historically, mummery requires silence, but on the stage crafted by Maura Way, nothing goes unsaid. Poem after poem presents a speaker unafraid to dissect the performance of a life in which every familiar story is rendered the strangest adventure. After all, “the best / part of an adventure is not / knowing you’re on one.” Like any worth loving, this book teaches us how to read it. Along the way we remember that teaching is really about learning, a rule is a misrule, and a lesson is a question in disguise. In these strikingly revelatory poems, we find a way to push against roles and expectations. We find a way to examine the self and the existential gaze of the other. We find the necessity of self-mockery as an artistic endeavor. We find anger and the steady ache toward healing. Ultimately, in a variety of forms and with a keen sense of music and imagery we find a witty, lyrical voice guiding us toward the confidence that revitalization is possible. We find Maura Way, one life deeply observed, offering us all the chance to dream that we “will get home eventually.”

—Christopher Shipman, co-author of getting away with everything

Maura Way’s new book is stuffed with poems that make one think, make one chuckle, and make one re-read. We're lucky when a poet’s sense of humor merges with old-soul wisdom, and who’s to say it’s “all for naughtiness”? This poet, who, she avows, has “seen clowns from / both sides now.” This is fresh, prescient work, and I'm grateful for it.

—Janet Holmes, author of The ms of m y kin