Cathedral/Grove by Susan Glickman (Signal Editions 2023)

I remember when I was plundering the poetry section of the Burnaby Public Library as a teenager and I came across Susan Glickman’s Henry Moore’s Sheep. I was instantly compelled by her work, and am now happy, so many years later, to be writing a review of her 8th collection of poems, Cathedral/Grove. On her website, Glickman bemoans the contrast between the number of reviews her initial collection received in the 80s and the few her books now can claim. This is a huge issue in Canadian poetry. Not only does there need to be more pay for critics and further avenues for their reviews to be published, but a review culture must be encouraged within all these MFA programs, in which to review a book is indeed an honour, as one is contributing to dialogue, thought and meaning, thereby growing and maturing the literary world. The only negative reviews are ones written from an utter dislike of the book at hand. If one appreciates any part of the collection, then one can truly compose a balanced entrance into the text that respects both the book and its creator.

Cathedral/Grove has almost a “selected poems” feel, in the sense that it offers a wide variety for the reader in form and subject matter (there are even wonderful drawings of fruit and tools to uncover within!) Beginning with a section of lyrics called “Walking the Dog,” paeans to nature and canine companionship, the tone inflected by the pandemic, Glickman’s sonorous, intimate voice is instantly present, generously offering us glimpses of her life, then and now. I loved the anaphoric beat of the eradicating list, “In Quarantine” as it propels us through negation: “no riding the red rooster/ no skating to Antarctica/or along the rings of Saturn,” the emotional sestina about traveling to funerals called “A Mind of Winter,” and the funny trip across the border of “Emporium” where purchases were made of “Bass Weejuns penny loafers, Nancy Drew mysteries/and Clark’s Teaberry gum, five pieces for 7 cents.” I was most entranced by the two segments of the book called “Survival Kit,” both featuring prose pieces in the voices of fruit and vegetables, then a range of tools. Recollecting both Louise Gluck and Lorna Crozier but with more of a quirky wink that Wislawa Szymborska might have employed, these pieces are humorous and moving. My favorites are the “Lettuce” who compares its state of being “mostly water” to that of the human condition and pleads with us to let it “lay my cool wrists on your fevered cheeks” and the “File” who rhapsodizes about being similar to Othello or Hamlet in that “what makes them great is the same quality as what defeats them.”

The eponymous long piece in fragments on the 2019 burning of Notre-Dame de Paris as well as the desecration of the ancient forests on Vancouver Island simply begs to be performed, its italicized repetitions of lines like, “still singing the ancient songs/of praise/and lamentation” increasing in power as the poem unfolds. Glickman doesn’t shrink from dealing with difficult subjects as with other pieces also in the final section, “Chimera,” such as the stunning “Smell of Smoke.” Riffing off the hauntings of Paul Celan its knell of a line: “still fleeing the smell of smoke” concludes all six stanzas. And then, bam, Glickman can suddenly pivot to an ecstatic poem about a cardinal, plumb the reasons why she is re-reading The Illiad or give us tips about living abroad. Only a couple of pieces get a bit too talky for their own good, as with the rambling “The Greenwood,” which possibly strings together a few too many factoids about Robin Hood to be compelling to the ear. Cathedral/Grove is eminently readable though, rarely falling into a dull moment, and underscoring the truth that “when prayer fails,/art will serve.”