The Road In Is Not the Same Road Out

April 20, 2015
Canadian poet Solie, Griffin Poetry Prize–winner for 2009’s Pigeon, opens her latest collection with an ode to spring, but here spring doesn’t simply herald a rebirth in the natural world. She sees “tulip heads removed one by one/ with a sand wedge” while “A hammer claws/ to the edge of a reno and peers over.” Solie’s poems exist in landscapes diverse and unforgiving, in which the tension between the modern world and the natural one is captured by an often-conflicted narrator. In “Be Reasonable,” the speaker battles bedbugs, but laments, “I didn’t want to kill the house spiders but they died/ in my engagement with the larger project.” Exhibiting an unceasing curiosity about the speaker’s surroundings, the poems in this book move from hotels and galleries to highways both urban and rural; they detail
battles with squirrels and bedbugs, while constantly questioning the choices we make and the priorities we choose. In “Sault Ste. Marie” the speaker wonders, “How difficult could it be/ to stay here? Anonymous and thereby absolved.” Solie’s latest collection chronicles the struggles of daily life with wit and intelligence.