Boruch, Marianne

Throughout, Boruch easily folds storytelling into her poems and makes deep emotional connections, as when Dorothy Wordsworth’s life segues into that of the poet’s grandmother. Repetition is occasionally overused, and the poet loses focus in the long poem “Keats Is Coughing,” which compares visits to Rome and Alaska, but overall this is a collection not to be missed.

Highly recommended.

Extraordinary how in a single poem from 2013 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award winner Boruch slides 1800s London barber-surgeons and the dissection of murderers only (condemned to hell anyway) to the observation, "Future or past, it's all we ever think about...