Still Life, 2017. Susan Glickman
What We Carry
my seventh volume of poetry with Signal Editions of Véhicule Press
published in April, 2019.
From the Reviews:
“The respect paid to nature in this book is palpable and the sadness at its destruction is equally strong. The technical dexterity is as powerful as the emotions and shows a poet at the peak of her creativity.”
– – Candace Fertile, Quill and Quire, April 2019.
“A keen awareness of mortality underlies the poems in Susan Glickman’s vibrant seventh collection. It’s expressed not as dread but as a bittersweet cherishing of what she holds dear, from memories to music to nature. As the Toronto poet and novelist puts it in one poem, “with more time behind you than ahead,/the world grows larger, pregnant with wonder.” The world’s losses grow larger, too: “Elegies for the 21st Century” is a series of sonnets addressed to various extinct species, including the river otter of Japan “once abundant as reeds in the waters.” These lyric poems have an unassuming grace and clarity, and an eclectic range: Glickman “translates” a number of Chopin’s 24 Preludes, Opus 28, into poems that mirror the mood of the music; elsewhere, she muses wittily on the travails of urban life, such as being “hemmed in … by backpacks and hockey bags,/groceries and gifts” on a crowded streetcar.
—Barb Carey, The Toronto Star, April 6 2019
“These are beautifully written, intelligent, accessible poems. “- Cary Fagan, The Writers’ Trust
“What a pleasure at every level of reading — language and imagery, sound (suggested by the inclusion of bars from Chopin’s 24 Preludes) and rhythm, but most of all the narrator’s wise and thoughtful voice, spiked with just the right measure of tartness. “One definition of grace: nature/without us” says the speaker, distressed by the extinction of species, on which she reflects in a series of beautiful sonnets tinged with irony. In “The Pyrenean Ibex,” she concludes: “The things we killed/can never be restored, we know that now./What we don’t know is who dies next, and how.” The love of nature abounds in the attention Glickman pays to detail in her evocations of the natural world. Sorrow, too — both for the passing of species and the cruelty done to humankind. “Small” (reflecting on the loss of artist Charlotte Salomon, a victim of Naziism) is anything but. “C Minor (Rogue Cell) is a sorrowful cry, contained in the poem’s careful language, until it strikes the reader in a separate and single devastating line (“because everyone leaves in the end; everyone always leaves.”) Don’t miss this book. It’s finely-crafted poetry, timely and universal.”
July 06, 2019 Carole Giangrande on Goodreads
“Glickman’s striking sensory poems are tightly controlled, even choreographed, with music in sections one, three, and five—loose, exquisite “translations” of many Chopin preludes. Part two, five “Elegies for the 21st Century,” balances the “Five Urban Salutations” of part four. Historical and mythological richness imbues the text with unexpected humour, as when Clytemnestra shows rage by “flinging plates / at Agamemnon.” “May Day” (horrifying equivocation) concentrates on the unnecessary deaths of factory workers in Bangladesh. Imagery, as with the unexpected tenor becoming vehicle in “a scarlet peony sheds its petals / like a woman shrugging off her fur coat,” intimates the importance of nature over humans.”
— Crystle Hurdle, “Never Enough Sad Poems?” Canadian Literature, 12 Feb. 2020.
“Summarizing either the thematic concerns or the stylistic characteristics of Susan Glickman’s latest collection, What We Carry, in a sentence or two—or even a paragraph—is virtually impossible. Several of the poems respond to Chopin’s Preludes. Others riff on slang phrases. Many explore the environmental crisis that human beings can no longer deny. Despite this variety, What We Carry consists of poems that are always individually interesting and yet also comment upon each other…
Glickman uses her straightforward diction to her advantage throughout the collection. It permits her to call attention to environmental collapse without sounding accusatory or self-righteous. She leaves readers to examine their own consciences. There’s a lot more to discuss in What We Carry—Glickman’s explorations of art and beauty and everyday life, her finesse with form, her ability to connect the one to the many—but rather than risk that her poetry will be lost in the analysis as it so often is in the translation, I’ll simply encourage readers to pick up this collection, then to explore her earlier work, and then to hope for more.”
– Lynn Domina, https://lynndomina.com/?p=661&fbclid=IwAR1lNinzHhfmExLfF55cyYRVEQjmtZwylTK1ax_B3UmvifHt8rC_eUsAoLc
The Smooth Yarrow
(Montreal: Véhicule Press, 2004)
To read a poem, click on the cover!
From the Reviews:
“The universe is a cabinet of mysteries we tiptoe by, wondering,” Susan Glickman writes in one of the poems in The Smooth Yarrow. That capacity for wonder is a hallmark of this Toronto writer’s appealing sixth collection. ..she writes with clarity and unassuming grace about a range of subjects, including the death of her father (in the book’s most poignant poem, “Breath”). She’s also capable of broad humour (the iconic poet Rilke is depicted lazing in a hammock and sipping a Long Island Iced Tea: who says waiting for inspiration to strike is hard work?)… Elsewhere, she describes the quality of light that makes “the half-full glass of autumn brim over//with glory. Not an upper case, grandiose kind of Glory/but a halo tossed like a Frisbee, accidental and luminous.” Glickman’s own poetry is rooted in the quotidian, not the grandiose. But it’s quietly affecting and often luminous.”
— Barbara Carey, The Toronto Star, November 16, 2012.
“The Smooth Yarrow calls on ancient wisdom, is earthy and enigmatic, and trembles with embodied memory and premonition … Glickman’s writing is defiant: like yarrow, it is lean and strong, not only beautiful, but possessed of myriad healing properties.”
— Stevie Howell, Quill and Quire, May 2012.
“In Susan Glickman’s The Smooth Yarrow, the poet makes her subject the depth and breadth of, as one poem titles it, Average Life. Her chief music is the human body, its composite breaks and gurgles … Glickman’s topics are typical, but she finds incorrigible depth in poems like Down in the Mouth, about a toothache … The Smooth Yarrow finds her at her best, able to leap tall ennui in a single bound.”
— Jacob McArthur Mooney, The Globe and Mail, July 30 2012
‘You would be hard pressed to find a more natural voice in Canadian poetry and a voice full of such casual authority… Like all of her poems, those in The Smooth Yarrow are so humane and heartfelt and yet there is a tension underlying this naturalness – and it is that tension that makes these poems/stories universal. Glickman knows what it is that we want to know.”
— Michael Dennis, http://michaeldennispoet.blogspot.ca/
“Susan Glickman’s book, The Smooth Yarrow, shows a chilling awareness of mortality through the accumulation of injuries like broken bones and the loss of teeth. Not old yet, she is close enough to celebrate elderly women “who use their best china every day / and jump the queue at the grocery store because they have so little in their baskets / and no time to waste.” Even her garden poems mix exquisite celebrations of new life with knowledge of the transience of beauty. The first section of her work is called “Homeopathic Principles.” Whatever the truth of homeopathy as a medical practice might be, the philosophy of treating an illness with drugs that induce its symptoms is – suggestive. A poem can build up our resistance by administering mild doses of the very toxins that we suffer from in living: sickness, age, grief. The loss of a loved one is the greatest toxin of all, and Glickman’s elegy for her father, “Breath,” offers not consolation but a powerful recreation of his passing, with the breath of the dying man as the focal point for a family unsure how to react. Emily Dickinson’s great poem, “IheardaFlybuzz–whenI died” comes to mind, but the confusion in Glickman’s poem is in the watchers, not the person dying. “We hesitated, no longer sure what to pray for.” Uncertainty is the paradoxical remedy here, evidence of how deeply the family cares. The poem that deals explicitly with homeopathy as a metaphor is “Homeopathic Remedies for Scar Tissue.” Glickman knows that life is a series of scarring experiences. One remedy is to smear sandalwood paste on the injury. It will attract bees, from which we may learn how to dance in the sun and how to fight back, though a bee’s self-defence is fatal. But life is fatal, after all. In one of her excellent garden poems she celebrates the compacted hearts of rosehips (analogues for the mature poet), and calls them “Late bloomers: late / as in late Brahms. Not tardy / but ripe.” The analogy with the great autumnal works of Brahms is a good one and also fits Glickman’s own wise and elegant work.”
— Bert Almon, The Montreal Review of Books, Spring 2013 .
“All in all, The Smooth Yarrow is an eclectic, evolving mixture. Like yarrow, an herb often used to stanch the flow of blood from wounds, the collection touches on some painful material but winds up being strangely soothing. Glickman possesses a wry humour and a deep, thorny wisdom that shines through even The Smooth Yarrow’s darkest pieces and turns them into playful riffs on the chaos and hidden beauty of life.”
— Scott Daley, The Bull Calf; www. thebullcalfreview.ca
“The Smooth Yarrow has a conversational tone in places, such as the poem “Homeopathic Remedies for Scar Tissue” where she has a cheeky conversation with well-intended misguided advice, [p. 22]
Tie a handful of crushed mint leaves in a piece of muslin to extract their juice. Rub the cloth all over your scars. You may be wounded, but don’t you smell fresh!
Although also about grief and its toxins, she keeps a more irregular and irreverent distance from it. The poems are not without skin and allow themselves to unpin themselves, move and move again.
One of my favorite poems in the book is “Things From Which One Never Recovers” which is a list poem that shifts weight continually over its length from
The girl on the high school basketball team who said
You have the biggest ass I’ve ever seen
the taste of cod-liver oil in a spoonful of molasses
administered by a schoolfriend’s proper British mother
as a prophylactic against obsolete diseases
The clipped tone that moves sternly merrily on, saying and leaving it to the reader to understand rather than spend time jawing it all out further to the nth degree is nice. And the cadence is terribly tasty. As it is later in the poem that doesn’t grow old,
a contemptuous review that gets everything wrong in elegant language
like a sadist with impeccable manners
the entrenched injustice of the world that renders one’s own problems
too trivial to mention
that there are different kinds of shoes for every sport
but only one pair of arthritic feet.
It’s a dark humour but it lines up well with my own.
— Pearl Pirie, http://pagehalffull.com/pesbo/2013/04/01/versefest-plan-99-presents/
“The Smooth Yarrow, Susan Glickman’s seventh published collection, sees the Canadian poet in familiar, playful territory once more. Within a little over two dozen entries, Glickman revels in wry verbiage, a recuperative tone and intricacies on par with the miniscule buds of the yarrow flower.”
- Joe Clinkenbeard December 11, 2012 https://spectrumculture.com/2012/12/11/the-smooth-yarrow-by-susan-glickman/
Susan Glickman creates beautiful images and music in her poetry. I give her book “The Smooth Yarrow” my highest recommendation.
— on November 22, 2012 on Amazon
Earlier volumes of poetry:
Running in Prospect Cemetery: New & Selected Poems
(Montreal: Véhicule Press, 2004)
To read a poem, click on the cover!
From the Reviews:
“From the first page, I was gripped by Glickman’s clear voice, and her frankness soon earned my trust. Even in her earliest poems, she is adept at capturing mood in her narrative, realist style — the bravery required of living alone, for example, or the trepidatious hope brought on by a day of false spring. But what wins me is Glickman’s ability to tackle big emotions while confronting ambivalences.”
–Sonnet L’Abbé, The Globe and Mail, Saturday, July 17, 2004
“Intelligence, compassion and wit permeate Glickman’s writing. She seems to have more of an understanding than most people of what life is all about and the scope of topics – about which Glickman seems quite knowledgeable – is impressive.”
— Pat Johnson and Cynthia Ramsay, The Western Jewish Bulletin, November 19, 2004.
“Glickman (is) capable of unpredictable metaphor, and those insights toward which every poet strives: the ones that startle with both truth and originality. She allows herself the freedom to stumble on unexpected associations and to run with them. She can string together a solid line, can carry a poem to its logical — or, even better, illogical — end. Her toolkit contains wisdom, perspective, humour… She exploits the personal, but judiciously; she is not a navel-gazer. Her subject matter is neither self-indulgent nor small time.”
–Anita Lahey, The Malahat Review, Winter 2005
“Susan Glickman is a poet of astonishing versatility and skill. She is able to carry off the long poem and the sequence in a way that few contemporary poets can. Her best poems are infused with an intelligent irony, which makes them instantly likeable, but not at all throwaway or glib. And if the new poems included here are any sort of guide, she still seems to be growing as a poet, at a stage in her career when many would be content to rest on their reputations.”
–Kevin Higgins, Books in Canada, March 2005, 29-30
“It was a treat to be able to trace Susan Glickman’s career through its various creative and domestic stages in her Running in Prospect Cemetery: New and Selected Poems. Do all volumes of selected poetry imply a spirit of nostalgia, not just a look back, but a desire to repossess what recedes from us? …I think of Glickman as a kind of prophet of household immediacy, both its redemptive joys and its complicated relationship with a writer’s creative imperatives … I’m not sure why, but Glickman’s voice always makes me think of the person who will keep everyone’s spirits up while the ship is sinking, but who you know probably cries herself to sleep at night. “
–Jeffrey Donaldson, University of Toronto Quarterly 75, Winter 2006, 49.
“Glickman proves over and over again that contemporary poetry need not be dystopian, obscure, ugly or angry. Even better, she has a great sense of humor! Her poems illuminate matters that lie closest to us: giving birth (and the years of consequences thereof); the death of a dear friend/ parent/lover; driving home from (wherever); miracles of the natural world; youth (and what happens afterwards). Within the space of three lines one is apt to experience both a tear and a chuckle. My favorites mostly have to do with families — the perils and joys of the meshpucha.” – Jim Puskas, 5 stars on Goodreads
Two even earlier volumes are still available!
Hide & Seek
(Montreal: Vehicule Press, 1995)
I cannot find my list of reviews for this title! When I do, I will add them. My apologies.
Click on the cover to read extracts from the book!
Click here to buy the book: Hide & Seek
Henry Moore’s Sheep and Other Poems
(Montreal: Vehicule Press, 1900)
Click on the cover to read extracts from the book.
Reviews of Henry Moore’s Sheep and Other Poems (1990)
“Stephen Henighan, “Small Presses,” The Gazette (Montreal), Saturday, Nov.17, 1990.
Allan Brown, “The Bookstand,” The Kingston Whig-Standard Magazine, Nov.4, 1990, 20.
Stephen Evans, “Sheep, Women, and Science: A Poetic Combination,” The Link (Concordia University), Tuesday, Dec.4, 1990.
Ian Dempsey, “Henry Moore’s Sheep,” Canadian Materials (Jan. 1991), 47-8.
Charlene Diehl-Jones, “Poets’ Corner,” Books in Canada (Feb. 1991), 54.
Norm Sacuta, “Poet Dares Have an Opinion,” The Journal (Edmonton), Sunday March 3, 1991.
Catherine Hunter; joint review with Erin Mouré’s WSW in Prarie Fire 12#13, 88-92.
John Moore. “Monumental Sculptor Inspires Lyrical Revelations,” in The Vancouver Sun, Saturday June 8, 1991, D1.
Winters. Choice (American Library Association), July/August 1991, 170.
Ronald Hatch, “Letters in Canada,” The University of Toronto Quarterly, 61#1 (Fall 1991), 56.
Neil Besner, “Henry Moore’s Sheep,” in The Journal of Canadian Poetry 7 (1992), 80-5.
Laurence Steven and Christine Prieur, Canadian Book Review Annual (1992), 201-2.
My first two collections, The Power to Move (1986) and Complicity (1983), both also from Vehicule Press, are out of print.
The best poems from those books may be found in Running in Prospect Cemetery.
Reviews of Complicity (1983)
Jeanette Seim, “Lyrical Ironies,” The Canadian Forum (May 1984), 34
Douglas Fetherling, “Poetry,” Books in Canada (June-July 1984), 24.
Robert Allen, “Mapping the Distance from Heart to Heart,” Matrix (Spring 1984), 65-7.
Paul Serralheiro, “Complicity,” Rubicon, (Fall-Winter 1984), 197-9.
Anne Cimon, “Urban Gardens,” Cross Canada Writers’ Quarterly 6#1, 21.
George Young, “Quietly Re/Creating Our Lives,” Focus (June 1984), 26-7.
Julie Bruck, “Chronicle of Conscience,” The Gazette (Montreal), Saturday May 19, 1984.
Donalee Moulton-Barrett, “Complicity,” Canadian Materials (12-13, 1984).
Christopher Levenson, “Aspects of Realism,” Arc, 15 (Fall 1985), 74-85.
Lorraine Weir, “Need to Witness,” Canadian Literature 103 (Winter 1984), 105-7.
Donalee Moulton-Barrett, “Complicity,” Canadian Book Review Annual (1983), 21011.
Neil Fisher, “Finding a Proper Distance,” The Antigonish Review 65 (Autumn 1985), 161-4.
Douglas Barbour “Complicity,” Canadian Poetry Chronicle( 1984), Kingston: Quarry Press, 1985, 40-1.
anon. “Complicity,” Atlantis: A Women’s Journal11#1 (1985), 161-2.
Referred to and quoted from in William New’s survey of Canadian poetry in The Journal of Commonwealth Literature 9#2 (1984), 44-63.
Referred to and quoted from by Laurie Ricou in The Literary History of Canada, Vol. IV., 1990.
It is astonishing that my first book received so many reviews, but also a sad reflection on our current literary situation that no first book ever gets noticed this way anymore! Indeed, wonderful books of poetry are constantly released into a deafening silence, as there are so few places that still can review them.
Reviews of The Power to Move (1986)
Barbara Carey, “The Power to Move,” Books in Canada (May 1987), 23. Also recommended by Books in Canada (June-July 1987).
Pat Bolger, “The Power to Move,” Canadian Materials 16 (Sept. 1987), 185-6.
Glenn Hayes, group review in Poetry Canada Review 9#3 (Summer 1987), 29-30.
Leona Gom, “Second Look,” Event, 1987.
- Travis Lane, “You Ask Me What I’m Thinking,” The Fiddlehead, 1987.
Stephen Scobie, “The Power to Move,” The Malahat Review 79, 166.
Carolyn Bond, “The Power to Move,” Quarry 36#4 (Fall 1987), 83-6.
Carolyn Bond, “The Power to Move,” The Kingston Whig-Standard Magazine, Sept. 19, 1987, 27.
Patricia Keeney, group review in Cross Canada Writers’ Magazine 10#3 (1988), 101-4.
Christopher Levenson, “The Power to Move,” in The Journal of Canadian Poetry 3 (1988), 54-62.
Mentioned and quoted from by William New in his survey of Canadian poetry for The Journal of Commonwealth Literature 23#2 (1988), 36-49.
Andrew Vasius in The Canadian Book Review Annual (1986), 96-7.
And here is a list of all the poetry anthologies I have been in:
The Norton Introduction to Poetry, Seventh Edition, ed. J. Paul Hunter. New York: WW Norton.
The New Spice Box, ed. Ruth Panofsky. Toronto: The New Jewish Press, 2017.
The Heart Is Improvisational, ed. Carol Lipszyc. Oakville: Guernica Editions, 2017.
Boobs, ed. Ruth Daniell. Halfmoon Bay, BC: 2016
Cocoa Cabin, ed Pearl Pirie. Phafours Press, 2015.
70 Canadian Poets, ed. Gary Geddes. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2014.
Desperately Seeking Susans, ed. Sarah Yi-Mei Tsiang. Fernie, BC: Oolichan Books, 2012.
2011 Global Poetry Anthology. Montreal: Signal Editions, 2011.
White Ink, ed. Rishma Dunlop. Toronto, Demeter Press 2007.
Being Alive, ed. Neil Astley. Highgreen, Northumberland: Bloodaxe Books, 2004.
Poetry International 7/8, ed. Fred Moramarco. San Diego: San Diego State University Press, 2003.
Gifts, ed. Rhea Tregebov. Toronto: Sumach Press, 2002.
We All Begin in a Little Magazine. Ottawa: Arc Magazine, 1998.
On Common Ground ed. Jeanne Godfrey, Don Stone, and Faye Ward. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1995.
The Signal Anthology, ed. Michael Harris. Montreal: Signal Editions, 1993.
Sudden Miracles, ed. Rhea Tregebov. Toronto: Second Story Press, 1991.
Companeros, ed. Hugh Hazelton and Gary Geddes. Dunvegan, Ontario: Cormorant, 1990.
Poetry by Canadian Women, ed. Rosemary Sullivan. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1989.
More Garden Varieties, ed. Douglas Burnet Smith. Toronto: Aya Press, 1989
Celebrating Canadian Women, ed. Greta Hoffman Nemiroff. Toronto: Fitzhenry and Whiteside, 1989.
Relations, ed. Kenneth Sherman. Oakville: Mosaic Press, 1986.
Essential Words, ed. Seymour Mayne. Oberon Press, 1985.
Anything Is Possible, ed. Mary di Michele, Oakville, Ontario: Mosaic Press, 1984.
Full Moon, ed. Janice LaDuke and Steve Luxton. Dunvegan, Ontario: Quadrant, 1983.
The Inner Ear, ed. Gary Geddes. Dunvegan, Ontario: Quadrant, 1982.
Aurora, ed. Morris Wolfe. Toronto: Doubleday, 1980
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