"Do not run away from yourself. You will see strife and mercy all around. There will always be wars, the barricades of those who pile up treasure, the arrogant who want to be celebrated. But there are no real boundaries. We are all one. We are not alone."
These were the closing words of Marguerite Guzman Bouvard's poem "Silence," which she read as part of a poetry reading for her new volume of work titled The Light That Shines Inside Us.
The reading took place this past Thursday at the Women's Studies Research Center, where Bouvard is a resident scholar.
Bouvard's pieces are rooted in her commitment to humanism, her own experiences as a world traveler and scholarship as a political scientist, all of which have contributed to her sense of world citizenship and respect for the suffering of a wide variety of individuals.
In The Light that Shines Inside Us, Bouvard examines themes of humanity and the contradictory nature of the human experience, in that it is so plagued by war, yet contains so much beauty in its crevices of solace and simple joy.
This collection embodies Bouvard's abhorrence of boundaries, especially those placed on women. In an aside to the audience between readings, Bouvard exemplified this dislike of limitations. "Don't be too smart," she says sarcastically, "because people will want to cut you down." Writing allows Bouvard room to explore and move around. "In academia you're supposed to be one thing," she said, "stay in your department and not move out ... this is a place where you don't have boundaries."
As a resident scholar at the WSRC, Bouvard's career extends far beyond poetry. She organized the first Tillie K. Lubin Symposium in 1994 on the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, a group of Argentinian mothers whose children disappeared during a military dictatorship between 1976 and 1983.
She has also sponsored other lectures related to women, including a lecture series on women and human rights and on environmental racism. She has organized panels for Women's History Month and has had two exhibits at the Dreitzer Gallery and one at the Kniznick gallery in the WSRC.
Bouvard was a political science professor at Regis College and a director of poetry workshops for many years. She has published 17 books and numerous articles in thean array of academic fields that include political science, psychology, literature and poetry.
Her works focus predominantly on human rights and political issues as well as the suffering that characterizes the human condition universally.
For example, she published a book on the same topic as the first Lubin Symposium lecture about the Plaza de Mayo mothers, titled Revolutionizing Motherhood: "The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, as well as a book examining the difficulties veterans face returning to civilian life titled Invisible Wounds of War: Coming Home from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Bouvard explains that her creative process for her poetic works differed from her nonfiction pieces because for poetry, she has to be alone and secluded in order to fully feel the resonance of her emotions.
"For some reason people think that emotions are not intelligent, but they are," she told her listeners. Yet she still maintained a connection to the outside world through a window that bridges the gap between the world inside and that outside.
This embodies the style her work, as she brings emotionality to politics, connecting two seemingly unrelated spheres.
Many of Bouvard's pieces are inspired by her cultural heritage. She has a personal connection to Syria as well as Europe because of her Syrian grandmother and her Italian heritage. This makes her poems that reference these particular geographic regions potent, bolstering her connection to her subject matter.
In her reading of her poem "Diaspora," she addresses the tragedy of Syrian refugees. "The arc of their country vanished," she read "as they fled into the blank pages of days, unknown languages, improvising life's discordant music."
Bouvard also read a poem titled "The Island Behind Our Laws," addressing the emotional anguish of those who have suffered at Guantanamo Bay. "The man who held his son on his lap ... brothers and sisters that loved him ... where death is kept at bay it is where my country's heart pulses behind a barbed wire." Bouvard crafts a connection between personal identity and emotion and the world that is polluted by war and affliction.
Currently, Bouvard is in the process of writing a book titled, Moral Heroes and Heroines. In this book, as well as in many of her other works, Bouvard thematically incorporates a glimmer of hope for the audience that illuminates the human experience, even in times of great suffering.
Her poem "Somalia" which she read toward the end of the event, is no exception. Bouvard expanded on a picture of an emaciated child from a news source that prompted deep unsettling feelings within her. She articulated the delicate balance between vileness and purity that characterizes the world.
"His eyes are luminous as the sea, reflect a cloudless sky, radiate his innocence ... his gaze has the eternity of ancient texts, reminding us that there is light and darkness in our hearts."