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The Smooth Yarrow
A poet of astonishing versatility and skill. –Books in Canada
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.
Praise for Susan Glickman:
"I was gripped by Glickman’s clear voice, and her frankness soon earned my trust. But what wins me is Glickman’s ability to tackle big emotions while confronting ambivalences." —The Globe and Mail
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.
Praise for Susan Glickman:
"I was gripped by Glickman’s clear voice, and her frankness soon earned my trust. But what wins me is Glickman’s ability to tackle big emotions while confronting ambivalences." —The Globe and Mail
- GenresPoetry
78 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 2012
29 people want to read
About the author
Susan Glickman
26 books37 followersSusan Glickman grew up in Montréal and speaks both English and French. She started out as a dance and drama major at Tufts University in Boston, migrated to Greece for a year of amateur archaeology and professional tanning, and ended up with a double first in English from Oxford University. She finally returned to Canada in 1977, after answering phones and weeding through the slush pile for Sidgwick and Jackson Publishers in London, England, to work for a very small left-wing press in Toronto.
This job somehow inspired her to return to university to write a doctoral dissertation on Shakespeare at the University of Toronto, where she taught English and Canadian literature and creative writing until 1993, first full time on a short term contract, then as a post-doc, then as a Canada Research Fellow. Since then, while raising two children with her husband, glass artist Toan Klein, she has taught creative writing at the University of Toronto, Ryerson University, the Avenue Road School of the Arts, and online with Writers in Electronic Residence, and has been a sought-after guest teacher at numerous institutions including Concordia University, Queen’s University, and Franklin University in Indiana, USA. Glickman also works as a freelance editor, mostly of academic books for McGill-Queen’s University Press.
She is the author of seven volumes of poetry, most recently What We Carry (2019). Her first novel, The Violin Lover (Goose Lane, 2006) won the Canadian Jewish Book Award for fiction and was named one of the year’s best novels by The National Post. Her second, The Tale-Teller (Cormorant, 2012), was a best-seller in Quebec after appearing in French as Les Aventures étranges et surprenantes d'Esther Brandeau, moussaillon (Editions du Boréal: 2013). Her Toronto murder mystery, Safe as Houses, was published in 2015, and her YA novel The Discovery of Flight in 2018.. Her first children’s book, Bernadette and the Lunch Bunch, was named one of the best books of 2008 by the Canadian Children’s Book Centre, and was followed by two others, also highly praised: Bernadette in the Doghouse (2011) and Bernadette to the Rescue (2012); all three were translated into French by Editions du Boréal. Her literary history, The Picturesque & the Sublime: A Poetics of the Canadian Landscape (McGill-Queen's University Press, 1998) won both the Gabrielle Roy Prize for the best work of English Canadian literary criticism and the Raymond Klibansky Prize for the best work in the Humanities.
This job somehow inspired her to return to university to write a doctoral dissertation on Shakespeare at the University of Toronto, where she taught English and Canadian literature and creative writing until 1993, first full time on a short term contract, then as a post-doc, then as a Canada Research Fellow. Since then, while raising two children with her husband, glass artist Toan Klein, she has taught creative writing at the University of Toronto, Ryerson University, the Avenue Road School of the Arts, and online with Writers in Electronic Residence, and has been a sought-after guest teacher at numerous institutions including Concordia University, Queen’s University, and Franklin University in Indiana, USA. Glickman also works as a freelance editor, mostly of academic books for McGill-Queen’s University Press.
She is the author of seven volumes of poetry, most recently What We Carry (2019). Her first novel, The Violin Lover (Goose Lane, 2006) won the Canadian Jewish Book Award for fiction and was named one of the year’s best novels by The National Post. Her second, The Tale-Teller (Cormorant, 2012), was a best-seller in Quebec after appearing in French as Les Aventures étranges et surprenantes d'Esther Brandeau, moussaillon (Editions du Boréal: 2013). Her Toronto murder mystery, Safe as Houses, was published in 2015, and her YA novel The Discovery of Flight in 2018.. Her first children’s book, Bernadette and the Lunch Bunch, was named one of the best books of 2008 by the Canadian Children’s Book Centre, and was followed by two others, also highly praised: Bernadette in the Doghouse (2011) and Bernadette to the Rescue (2012); all three were translated into French by Editions du Boréal. Her literary history, The Picturesque & the Sublime: A Poetics of the Canadian Landscape (McGill-Queen's University Press, 1998) won both the Gabrielle Roy Prize for the best work of English Canadian literary criticism and the Raymond Klibansky Prize for the best work in the Humanities.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
December 5, 2012
Lovely collection - a beautiful balance of poignant regret, gentle humour, a dash of satire and a lyric tone that sweetly sings its way through many of the poems - I especially loved Glickman's elegy to her father and the series of garden poems and, in particular, "Rilke Doesn't Wear Sunscreen"!
Displaying 1 of 1 review