Poems: New & Selected

I only recently became acquainted with Marianne Boruch's exquisite poetry. Dense and lyrical, with enough avian metaphors to make me whoop for joy. One poem from this book, "Bird Passing," was recorded on the "For the Birds" radio program.

Marianne Boruch, (Professor of Poetry at Purdue University), has included twenty-five new poems in Poems: New & Selected, a 208 page, hardcover anthology of her poems which also includes lavish selections from her previous poetry publications. Boruch's poetry is unpretentious, specific, and at times painfully subtle. Her work seems to translate the untranslatable. A selection is quoted here from The History of The: drawing, of course "I would draw my cat/ but she'd look back. I would/ draw her but she's/ way past sleep and sheds her/ quiet like tickertape/ down the long hallway, talking/ cranky and offkey./ Of course, it's winter. I would draw/ that, but a pencil isn't fierce enough for branches stripped to nothing. To one leaf, which/ is as good as nothing. And nothing -/ that gift needs invisible ink./ I'd draw the way words feel/ in the mouth after too long without/ words, or the way the body rises after/ hours of dream, gravity/ on every bone again, that anchoring/ and ache./ Or I wouldn't. Or I couldn't. / Or I'd bury the treasure/ in the most obvious place (pp.7-8)." Boruch has indeed buried the treasure in the most obvious place; her beautiful poems.