cover image Eventually One Dreams the Real Thing

Eventually One Dreams the Real Thing

Marianne Boruch. Copper Canyon (Consortium, dist.), $15 trade paper (108p) ISBN 978-1-55659-491-5

In her meditative new collection, Boruch (Cadaver, Speak) writes at once with and against the cascade of information and fevered, restless attention that mark contemporary daily life. These poems move with an ease and dexterity among current events, etymology, the environment, architecture, memories, and family histories. Boruch’s patient, quiet consideration of each of her many interests anchors the collection, and the persistence of the thinking, observing mind is the counterpoint and antidote to “all that cheering and static across mountains and cities/ and wires and rivers unto ocean and airspace and star-studded orbits.” The excess by which she’s “pelted every day/ by factoids. Word unto word unto word” does not dull the act of creation: “Wow. To make anything at all, be it/ moonlight or a shrug.” With the flaneur’s relaxed wisdom, Boruch places the exceptional within the mundane and the intimate within the universal, and above all highlights the present moment without ever losing sight of a broader context in which now is just one moment among many: “Because it’s ancient: there is/ no progress, only a deepening. Or not even that.” Readers are invited to think carefully through the world they’ve inherited, with Boruch’s discerning eye and conversational voice as a guide. (July)