Bestiary Dark - by Marianne Boruch (Paperback)

About the Book

"Written following Marianne Boruch's 2019 Fulbright in Australia, and on the heels of the devastating fires that began after her departure, Bestiary Dark is filled with strange and sweet details, beauty, and impending doom-the drought, fires, and floods that have grown unspeakable in scale. These poems face the ancient, unsettling relationship of humans and the natural world-the looming effect we've wrought on wildlife-and what solace and repair our learning even a little might mean"--

Book Synopsis

Is the world finite? Through place and time and the great expanse of Australia, Marianne Boruch ponders this, aided not just by wallabies and platypus, kangaroos and wombats, but by a cheeky Archangel who wanders in and out of her poems. The pertinent wisdom of an Indigenous Elder is here too, along with the continuing presence of Pliny the Elder, the Roman naturalist and historian who in 77 CE posed the question Boruch considers. Written following Boruch's Fulbright in Australia, and on the heels of the devastating fires that began after her departure, Bestiary Darkis filled with strange and sweet details, beauty, and impending doom--the drought, fires, and floods that have grown unspeakable in scale. These poems face the ancient, unsettling relationship of humans and the natural world--the looming effect we've wrought on wildlife--and what solace and repair our learning even a little might mean.

Review Quotes

"Written with unabashed awe. . . . Boruch keeps her touch light and self-deprecating as the world that the poems describe disappears, or has already been destroyed by the bush fires . . . shortly after her time there. . . . But she believes that to 'recollect is to rescue, / to invite back the plain astonishments.' These poems offer delights and fascinations at every turn."--Publishers Weekly, starred review

"The bestiary is an unusual work, tasked with the prospect of a never-ending compilation, limited as all texts are. In Boruch's hands, it becomes a bridge through time; as readers, we are made to consider Pliny's death in Pompeii while Boruch recalls the burning landscape she has barely escaped. Mortality plagues this text--why, then, revive the bestiary? A simple answer: There must be a witness to the entries ripped from its pages, seemingly every day."--The Rumpus

"Marianne Boruch's eleventh collection draws on observation and questions gathered during her time as a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Canberra in 2019. It also takes inspiration from Pliny the Elder's Natural History, a compendium of scientific and social-scientific knowledge first published in AD 77. Boruch ties these two threads together with an inventive touch and a sarcastic yet wondrous tone.The result is a wide-ranging exploration of the interplay between human desires and the natural world."--Poetry Wales

"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

"She sees and considers with intensity. Her poems often give fresh examples of how rare and thrilling it can be to notice."--The Washington Post

"Boruch displays a quietly gymnastic intellect in the examinations of art, the body, and the human condition."--American Poets

"Her approach isn't meant to fix or crystallize her ideas in any hard and fast light, but rather to present the music of her thinking. . . . Boruch brings in personal memory and philosophical speculation, infusing much of this writing with slightly skewed skepticism and rueful uncertainty about one's ability to be absolute about anything."--Trinity University Press

About the Author

Marianne Boruch is the author of The Book of Hours (Copper Canyon Press, 2011), which received the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, among other works. She developed and directed the MFA program in creative writing at Purdue University, where she has taught since 1987. She lives in Indiana.