The Smooth Yarrow
“You would be hard pressed to find a more natural voice in Canadian poetry and a voice full of such casual authority.”
—Poet Michael Dennis on his blog
The Smooth Yarrow, Susan Glickman’s sixth collection of poetry, reveals her once again as a truth-teller of the first order. Whether it’s a brilliantly sustained elegy to her late father or a gripping and often disquieting sequence on the art of gardening, Glickman’s new poems are marked by the abiding virtues of her celebrated career: effortless musicality, sparkling mischief, uncompromising insight. Glickman has long been one of Canada’s best poets and The Smooth Yarrow shows her working at the height of her powers.
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 in Quill and Quire
“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 in The Globe and Mail
“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 … 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 in The Montreal Review of Books
“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 in The Bull Calf
“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:
‘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!’
…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
“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
“Susan Glickman creates beautiful images and music in her poetry. I give her book The Smooth Yarrow my highest recommendation.”
—Deerpath on the Amazon website
