Poetry Daily Features Marianne Boruch in Their What Sparks Poetry Series
Poetry faculty member Marianne Boruch was recently featured in Poetry Daily, as part of their What Sparks Poetry series, discussing her poem, “So we get there just as.” Read an excerpt and find a link to the full text of both her short essay and the poem below:
Marianne Boruch on “So we get there just as”
This poem continues to haunt me, the first note of four small pieces spoken/sung/dreamt, an almost-musical refrain really because this roadkill emu comes back three times later in Bestiary Dark, my recent collection, to speak from the dead via the most ancient call and response, her voice back and forth with—well, I have no notion who her interlocutor might be.
But that emu, my experience seeing her, slowly became grounding and lens for the poems coming out of the five months I observed the natural world as a Fulbright Research Scholar in 2019 in a most astonishing country. Which included the Australian outback—real. The shocking particulars in this case, that massive wrench—real; that hit-and-run driver—despicably real; our stunned helplessness—real. And certainly real the emu’s terrible ooaa as the stopped trucker came down hard to end that creature’s misery, her repeated sound more real to me as weeks and months passed allowing the poem to emerge. The pain of that witnessing is seed and keeps growing. Now I understand that shattered emu as the heart and conscience of the book. As I wrote, there she was again and again and again: pissed, calm, visionary, fierce, a bit of a smart-ass. But she was solace. I stepped aside. I left her to it.
Read the full piece here: Marianne Boruch | Poetry Daily
