Marianne Boruch's Cadaver, Speak Comes Alive at Purdue University

Marianne Boruch's newest collection of poetry is inspired by her time in a medical school anatomy class during a Faculty Fellowship in a Second Discipline in 2008 at Purdue University, where she has taught in the English Department since 1987. This Thursday, she will join poetry and medical students at Purdue to release her eighth collection of poetry called Cadaver, Speak published by Copper Canyon Press. More from IndyStar:

In 2008, poet Marianne Boruch took the unusual step of attending a medical school anatomy class. It meant spending long hours in the anatomy lab, where they keep the dead bodies.

"I wanted to put myself into an unusual situation, one that might be terribly unnerving," Boruch said. She was 57. "I wanted to surprise myself, to reach, to dig deep. I wanted to put myself in a spot for which I had no plan, really, no agenda."

She applied for a Faculty Fellowship in a Second Discipline from Purdue University, where she has taught in the English department since 1987.

She got the fellowship, so on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays during that fall semester, she and 16 new medical students would spend two hours listening to lectures on anatomy and then two hours in the cadaver lab.

There Boruch bonded with one of the cadavers. It was the body of a 99-year-old woman. It had blue eyes. Later, Boruch wrote poetry through those eyes, and on Thursday, she, along with some medical students and student poets, will read from "Cadaver, Speak," her eighth poetry collection, published last spring by Copper Canyon Press.

Will Higgins: Is a cadaver an "it," or is a cadaver a "her" or "him"? What's the right pronoun?

Marianne Boruch: I think they deserve their personhood, still have a clear right to it. We should honor that. Gender is a huge part of who we are — or were, yes?

WH: Describe what you felt when you saw the face of your first cadaver.

MB: The fact is that in the lab, the heads were wrapped up in wet towels most of the term. We dissected every other part first. There we were, staring down into the most private parts of the body, dismantling them for weeks — the pelvic regions, for instance, usually completely covered. But now it was time to unwrap the heads. They were astonishing, haunting and oddly gorgeous. And it struck me: What we think of as the most public part of the body is actually the most private part. Meaning: The face is the most individual thing about us. It was a most poignant and moving moment to see them. "They look like Renaissance drawings. So beautiful ..." says the stand-in for me in the poem, dubbed "The Quiet One" by my speaker. Of course, my cadaver, in quoting me, wryly disdains that take. As usual, she thinks I'm delusional. [...]

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