A Stick That Breaks And Breaks

by Marianne Boruch

In this remarkable book, her fourth collection of poems, Marianne Boruch continues to explore the world around her with curiosity, wry humor, searching skepticism, and thoughtful tenderness. Her poems range widely, letting themselves be triggered, often, by quite ordinary events and people, in order to launch themselves into unpredictable questions and considerations.

Genres: Poetry

120 pages, Paperback

First published October 30, 1997

About the author

Marianne Boruch is an American poet. She graduated from the MFA Program for Poets & Writers at University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 1979, and after teaching at Tunghai University in Taiwan, and at the University of Maine at Farmington, went on to develop the MFA program in creative writing at Purdue University and was its director until 2005. She has taught there since 1987 as well as at the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers.

Reviews

[Patricia Murphy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm liking the progression of her voice, form, and subjects throughout the years.

That egg opens because a thing wants out.

Days turn like that to light.

Love is a wheel and a weight.

Tomatoes would have given their summer blood to it.

Poor child who knows what he knows, and we are fools.

Thinking is mostly trying not to drown.

How a wound stains. How we love to look at it.

On tables, at cupboards, white is every cherished distance in the Apple, in bread, now cut and abandoned, as if someone heard a voice and went to it.

O invincible country, where childhood is, and faith, a little masterpiece.