Kooser Features Boruch

In his American Life in Poetry column, former poet laureate Ted Kooser usually chooses delightful poems that sparkle and give us back our experiences. He missed the mark with Marianne Boruch's 'Nest."

While the poem could certainly do what Kooser claims for it, that it miraculously transforms an ordinary object, it contains two glaring flaws that draw so much attention to themselves that any value the poem might have is severely limited:

1. The lines "Woven basket / of a saint / sent back to life as a bird / who proceeded to make

a mess of things" reveals a ignorant notion about reincarnation and the low regard in which the poet holds "saints." Human beings seldom return to an animal form, and it is especially unlikely that a saint would do so. And only a religiophobe could aver that saints "make a mess of things."

2. The lines "merely a trick / of light, if light / can be tricked" do not make sense. In the phrase, "trick of light," it is the light that is doing the tricking. So to say "if light can be tricked" is to get the agent wrong.

Two such glaring flaws is unfortunate in any poem, especially a short 16-line poem. Ted needs to be more careful in picking poems.

To read the unfortunate poem, please visit American Life in Poetry: Column 127.