Eventually One Dreams the Real Thing

by Marianne Boruch

A starred review in Library Journal says this about Eventually One Dreams the Real Thing : “Only a poet as accomplished as Boruch could make such beautiful verse while leading us through the everyday, of life’s subtle, steady shiftings (‘the bird’s hunger, seeking shape’). If the opening image of a pool filled with cruelly dredged up roses bespeaks quiet assent (‘I stood before them the way an animal/ accepts sun’), the next poem turns immediately to progress (and hence progression) as a modern invention beyond the heaven-and-hell alternatives; finally, the poet concedes, ‘I lose track of my transitions.’ In fact, transition defines us. Here, a static painting gives way to ‘between and among,’ a simple typeface never yields a perfect copy, and even in a medieval score, two exquisite quavers are connected by a slur. Highly recommended.” "Marianne Boruch's work has the wonderful, commanding power of true She sees and considers with intensity."— The Washington Post "Boruch refuses to see more than there is in things—but her patience, her willingness to wait for the film of familiarity to slip, allows her to see what is there with a jeweler's sense of facet and flaw."— Poetry In her tenth volume of poetry, Marianne Boruch displays a historical omnipresence, as she converses with Dickinson, envisions Turner painting, and empathizes with Arthur Conan Doyle. She looks unabashedly at the brutality of recent history, from drone warfare to the disaster in New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina. Poems that turn her gaze towards childhood, nature, animals, and her own poetics are patches of light in the collection's chiaroscuro. From "Before and Every After": Eventually one dreams the real thing. The cave as it was, what we paid to straddle
a skinny box-turned-seat down the middle, narrow boat
made special for the state park, the wet, the tricky passing into rock and underground river. A single row of strangers faced front, each of us
behind another close
as dominoes to fall or we were angels lined up
politely, pre-flight… Marianne Boruch is the author of ten collections of poetry. She is the 2013 recipient of the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, and has taught at Purdue University since the inception of their MFA program. She lives in West Lafayette, Indiana.

Genres: Poetry

108 pages, Paperback

First published July 12, 2016

About the author

Marianne Boruch is an American poet. She graduated from the MFA Program for Poets & Writers at University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 1979, and after teaching at Tunghai University in Taiwan, and at the University of Maine at Farmington, went on to develop the MFA program in creative writing at Purdue University and was its director until 2005. She has taught there since 1987 as well as at the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers.

Reviews

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

I returned this book after reading a third of the poems. Poems are very personal, and those that touch one reader might not touch another. Whether a poem speaks to you has nothing to do with its value or how much it might speak to another.

[Jonathan Tennis · Rating 2 out of 5]

Couldn't really connect to any of the material in this collection. Not sure where I read a poem by this poet that made me interested in her work but I tried over the course of a few weeks to pick this up and read different poems but nothing stuck.

[Mandy E]

“I’m just saying there are/ charms on the bracelet from hell.” —“Mudfest”
and “If Only”

[Mark Underwood]

Working on a longer review ... Check back on insidetheordinary.com