The Book of Hours

By: Marianne Boruch

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Synopsis: "Marianne Boruch's work has the wonderful, commanding power of true attention."-The Washington Post"[H]er 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 magazineEndearingly strange, unsentimental, and uniquely structured, in true Rilkean fashion The Book of Hours questions the meaning and significance of everything from the flaws of human interaction to perfect posture. Unrelenting honesty and exacting description are coupled with the trials of a dying mother, saint shadows, birds, and "shit drying to chalk."My mother's body to wires, to tubesand their liquid, days she turned toward meor away, winter but so much sunfrom car to door. I followed it past nursesat their station talking movies, who's goodin one and not the other. Gown tiedat the back and neck, she slept besidea window. I wedged my chair there, reading,looking up, reading,-who knows whatI read-her legs bruised, thin, arms batteredby the doctor's needle. Her face. Can Isay this plainly now? There was lightas she grew less. She drifted to it.I'm not hungry, not religious, I'm in a spot,she told me one afternoon thenclosed her eyes to that radiance again.Marianne Boruch grew up in Chicago and earned a masters degree from the University of Massachusetts. She teaches at Purdue University and at Warren Wilson College. She lives in West Lafayette, Indiana.