Personal History

by Roo Borson, Jan (B01) Zwicky

Personal History is a book consisting of eight essays in the belles lettres tradition. Of the work, Borson "From the inside, each life seems an unbounded world; from the outside, a design can at times be seen. Just as repetition and variation form the heart of poetry and song, so too the seemingly singular events and questions that arise within a given life are echoed or "answered," recurring, most often more than once, in another time and place, sometimes another key. This idea underlies the eight pieces comprising this collection. Two begin from the standpoint of reading and writing, two from painting, two from particular places or "garden­scapes," and two from aspects of personal history and memory, but all of these elements and standpoints revolve throughout, interlinking the essays in an exploration of the adjacent regions of life and art." Roo Borson was drawn to the fine arts (and poetry in particular) from a very early age and this prose companion, rooted in the immediacy of experience and anti­didactic in bent, is dedicated to the idea that down the decades a book, or an image, however recorded, might fall now and again into the right hands.

116 pages, Paperback

First published August 15, 2008

About the author

Ruth Elizabeth Borson, who writes under the name Roo Borson (born 20 January 1952 in Berkeley, California) is a Canadian poet who lives in Toronto. She is a graduate of the University of British Columbia.

She has received many awards for her work, including the Governor General's Literary Award, 2004, and the Griffin Poetry Prize, 2005 for Short Journey Upriver Toward Oishida. She lives in Toronto with poet Kim Maltman, and with Maltman and Andy Patton is a member of the collaborative performance poetry ensemble Pain Not Bread.

Reviews

[Jay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Roo Borson. Like Anne Carson - she takes my breath away with the way she creates art out of the English language.