POET MAGUERITE GUZMAN BOUVARD: CAN JOY AND SADNESS CO-EXIST?

POET MAGUERITE GUZMAN BOUVARD: CAN JOY AND SADNESS COEXIST?

Review by Doug Holder


In the poem “The Years” in Marguerite Guzman Bouvard’s new poetry collection “ The Unpredictability of Light” ( Word Press) the poet writes:

“You walk with one foot in winter’s black ice, the other
in a burgeoning meadow. Can joy
and sadness co-exist?”

And in this collection of poetry Bouvard ,a resident scholar at the Women’s Studies Research Center at Brandeis University, mediates between the shoals of despair, and the light and hope of the shore.

In her poem “Balance” she skillfully uses the industrious of the bumblebee in contrast to mankind’s nihilism:

“…they do not know the text
conquer and subdue,
only the web and litany
of the Creation; stamen, pistil,
hive, haven, putting by
for lean times. They whir intently
on their miniature engines,
circling above me. They mean
no harm. They do not poison the air.”

In “March Rain” Bouvard ponders the wayward light in a litany of rain:

“…It is raining this morning
but how can we possibly predict
when and where true happiness
comes. It hides among the books
on my desk, in the tear stained
branches at my window.
It hides in the memory
Of my husband’s words when I cried out
I could go no farther. “You must try,”
He murmured, “You must try
because you are precious.”
In this bone chilling rain
of my illness, in the numbing
gray skies, a single word
opened a horizon, a road
where I could walk.

Highly Recommended.

Doug Holder/ Ibbetson Update/ Jan. 2009/Somerville, Mass.