The latest collection from award-winning poet Carol Giangrande explores time, grief, rebirth, and recalibration through the lens of the pastoral. In this “birdmind” view of love, loss and belonging, Giangrande captures the uneasy interplay between the human world and the natural world.
“Carole Giangrande’s This May Be The Year is an astonishing kaleidoscope of birds and ghosts, memories and metaphors — unflinching in its exploration of a world where “death/ [is] as common as birdsong” and “darkness may have rubbed ashes/into us.” This collection holds reverence in “nanosecond glimpses” of hope — in birds, spring, violets, bees, grass — the entire earth: this “holy place/where we come/to the world’s edge/for blessing.” Giangrande pinpoints moments in familial and global history, making space for awe as well as witness, with “tenuous evidence/of wonder” in every line and breathtaking image.”
— Kate Marshall Flaherty, author of Titch and Digging
“In This May Be The Year, Carole Giangrande confronts our current mood of discomfort with clarity and compassion, and a sensitive eye for compelling details. The opening poem, “Spring, Unsettled,” sets the tone: “So you reflect, knowing with vague unease/that life’s a puzzle, nothing you can change. /The only certitude is spring, and that for now, you’re safe.” While Giangrande celebrates the natural world which offers much-needed joy and comfort, she also captures the growing undercurrent of fear running through our lives. This is a timely book by a fine poet who offers us welcome companionship on our own reflective journey in an increasingly alarming world.”
— Eva Tihanyi, author of Circle Tour
Carole Giangrande was born and raised in the New York city area, and came to Canada to study at the University of Toronto. She’s worked as a broadcast journalist for CBC Radio, a Writer-in-Residence and as a teacher of journalism and political science, and she’s given readings at Harbourfront, Hart House and the Banff Centre for the Arts. Her fiction, articles and reviews have appeared in Grain, New Quarterly, Descant, Canadian Forum, Matrix, The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star and Books in Canada. Her poetry has been published in Queens Quarterly, Grain, Spiritus, The New Quarterly, Braided Way, Mudlark and Prairie Fire. Her essays have appeared in Eastern Iowa Review, EcoTheo Review and Antigonish Review. She’s married and lives in Toronto where she enjoys birding and photography.
Spring, Unsettled
See how the plum-ripe hyacinth appears
out of nowhere: the frail leaf, the insignificant violet,
the humble, lawn-eating dandelion, a poor worm
yanked from the ground by an early bird —
Peer into spring’s kaleidoscope, its weird amalgam,
gorgeous download of colour, the shrieking apparitions
of blue jays and cardinals, the woodpecker rapping,
the noiseless bomb-load of gold forsythia —
See how amazed you are that in a world like ours,
another nest rounds itself with eggs,
another kindly season has the good grace
to show up; how your heart aches
to hear that mutt howl his lonesome head off,
spinning with the peregrine falcon
that zaps a pigeon with a slash
of claw and wing —
Nothing explains what touches you. Longing
for a respite from winter, you feel May explode
by the roadside in another country, evil brilliance of cordite and fire,
and you tell yourself that the smallest insect
feeds the bird which ends up clawed by the neighbor’s cat
that, old and diabetic, will not live forever.
So you reflect, knowing with vague unease
life’s a puzzle, nothing you can change.
The only certitude is spring, and for now, you’re safe.
Kingfisher
Flight is the embroidery
of my body, its pattern and design.
I am woven of song, blue sky
ribbons my throat. I am the astonishing
spangle in the eye, joyful canopy
of wings, leap into imagined grace,
soft unfolding of daybreak. My nest
is a cliffside burrow, secret, hidden. My eggs
are sunlit, my young a dazzle
of longing and hunger. Each spring breaks open
into summer’s ripening. Then and now,
my wings are streaked with sapphire rain.
My body is silk on the wind.
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