Cathedral/Grove

Cathedral/Grove, Susan Glickman’s brilliant new collection, comes to terms with the question of legacy—what we leave behind as a species, as citizens, and as parents. Marked by the lucidity and precision she has been celebrated for, the poems encompass the monuments of Western civilization, a climate in decline, and the pandemic. The title is inspired by the fire that ravaged Notre Dame Cathedral in 2019, destroying the wooden roof-frame known as La Forêt; it also alludes to “Cathedral Grove,” otherwise known as MacMillan Provincial Park, one of the last old growth stands on Vancouver Island. In poems of praise and lament for our fractured world—“Everything is becoming more itself / or something else,” she writes—Glickman has tapped into a magnificent vein of lyric richness.

Reviews

Praise for Susan Glickman:

“These lyric poems have an unassuming grace and clarity.”—Barbara Carey, Toronto Star

“Glickman’s striking sensory poems are tightly controlled, even choreographed, with music.”—Crystal Hurdle, Canadian Literature