Special poetry events slated at PCPL, Peeler Center on Wednesday evening

Marianne Boruch

A distinctive benefit of being the Mary Rogers Field Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing at DePauw University is that the holder can invite another writer to DePauw and Greencastle.

DePauw's current Mary Field Professor, Rodney Jones, has invited award-winning Indiana poet Marianne Boruch to come to Greencastle on Wednesday, Oct. 30 to talk about poetry and to share her own work.

At 4 p.m. in the Kiwanis room of the Putnam County Public Library, Jones and Boruch will discuss the craft of poetry.

As Rodney has put it, he'd like to talk about "the relationship of craft and/or form to freedom."

Poetry is paradoxically both restricting and free. Hopes are that the audience will find the question of how the poet negotiates between constraints of craft and liberties of the imagination intriguing.

Professor Joe Heithaus will moderate the "Poetic Voices" discussion.

At 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Marianne Boruch will read from her work at Richard E. Peeler Art Center auditorium at DPU. The free program is being presented by DePauw's James and Marilou Kelly Writers Series.

A creative writing professor at Purdue University, Boruch was honored this year for her collection, "The Book of Hours."

Her other works include "Grace, Fallen From," "Poems: New and Selected," "A Stick That Breaks and Breaks" and "Moss Burning."

In addition, she has published two books of essays about poetry and a memoir, "The Glimpse Traveler."

The James and Marilou Kelly Writers Series was established at DePauw in 1998 with gifts from Marilou Morrell Kelly, a 1955 DPU graduate.

Meanwhile, Rodney Jones, who is at DePauw for the fall semester as the Mary Field Chair, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the winner of the 1989 National Book Critics Circle Award.

An emeritus professor of English at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, Jones has published 10 books, including "Elegy for the Southern Drawl," a Pulitzer Prize finalist; "Salvation Blues," winner of the Kingsley Tufts Prize; and "Transparent Gestures," which won the National Book Critics Circle Award.

His poems have appeared widely in leading magazines and in eight editions of "The Best American Poetry."