“Marianne Boruch’s voice has always been a compelling one, crisp and a bit akilter. Her poems are approachable even as they tilt toward mystery. Unsentimental, they peer fearlessly into emotional life, their power enhanced by their author’s dry eye and acute vision. The natural world often is both setting and protagonist in her work, its beauty and fierceness on display in all its vulnerability and strength. This latest collection, her seventh, takes its title from prayer books of the Middle Ages and is composed of eight sections, each containing eight untitled poems of sixteen lines. Within the book’s strictures moves a remarkable vitality. Description, dialogue, contemplation come in snippets and waves, their tone sometimes colloquial and humorous, sometimes elegant and grave. God speaks (with a contemporary edge), as does the poet’s hospitalized mother, others identified and not, and the poet herself, her meditations on the daily and the infinite — on poetry itself — coming leaf by leaf, hour by hour.”—Christine, Open Books: A Poem Emporium, Seattle. Buy The Book of Hours from your local indie.
Face Out
The Book of Hours by Marianne Boruch
January 1, 2012