Marianne Boruch 03-07-1989
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Authors
Boruch, Marianne 19890307
Issue Date
1989-03-07
Type
Video
Language
en_US
Keywords
Alternative Title
Abstract
Stan Sanville Rubin interviews Marianne Boruch. Boruch starts by reads "My Son and I Go See Horses" (0:55) from her collection of poems "View from the Gazebo". Marianne Boruch graduated from the University of Illinois and earned an MFA from the University of Massachusetts. She was the recipient of the Pushcart Prize in 1988 and an NEA Fellowship for Poetry in 1984. Up to the time of filming, Boruch had published two poetry collections "View from the Gazebo" and "Descendent". Her work has included teaching and leading poetry classes and writing workshops. The first topic of discussion is about the experience of loss in childhood in reference to "My Son and I Go See Horses". She talks about her childhood experience of living in Maine and going to cheap operas in which her brother sang. Stan and Marianne explore the images she has created in this piece and where these images came from and how the fit into the poem. The conversation continues explore the possibility that Marianne is recapturing herself in her childhood. She talks about how her childhood is what she has access to in the sense that she had the distance in her early twenties to write about her childhood while she was teaching in Taiwan. She refers to Flannery O'Connor's quote, "If you've survived childhood, you have enough to write about for the rest of your life." Stan shifts the conversation and invites Boruch to talk about the Victorian backdrop to her poems in "View from the Gazebo" and where the title had come from. She speaks about her sense of responsibility to the girl in the gazebo and to describe her experience of terror of seeing the bees come over the hedge. Marianne takes a moment to read the title poem "View from the Gazebo 1914" (8:58). Marianne and Stan talk about the "trance" state she writes in and how she tries to write out the images or moments that come to her when they do. She's talks about being most aware of the ideas she has at four-thirty in the morning. As part of the creative process, Stan and Marianne explore the reality of words and how they are used to translate the internal or imaginary world and the real world. They talk about how the borders of each world are permeable and neither writer is certain of which direction they're translating. Marianne takes a moment to read "On Translation" (16:15) from "View from the Gazebo" to demonstrate the more "wacko" or surrealist properties of her work despite her feeling that "View from the Gazebo" is more realist than she normally would lean toward. After the reading, Marianne mentions this piece is a critique of the way she translates when she writes. Stan shifted the topic again to Marianne's childhood and when poetry became important to her and how it influenced her current creative process. She outlined what her earliest writing was like and the experiences that accompanied those pieces. She also spoke about her learning experiences in classes, workshops, and her collegiate experience both in her undergraduate and post graduate work. Marianne mentions the poets she admired most and what is was about their work that held her attention most. Stan invites Marianne to talk about her collection of Poems "Descendent" and where it came from. She expressed that this collection seemed more serious than "View from the Gazebo", perhaps because she is older than she was when she wrote "View from the Gazebo". Stand requested a reading of "Delphinium" (33:50) from "Descendent". They explore the moments of terror written into "Delphinium" and in other poems. They talk about "duende" or, in this case, joy in the presence of death present in some of her poems, specifically, her flower poems. The conversation closes with Boruch reading "Thanksgiving" (46:12) from "Descendent".
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Publisher
SUNY Brockport