kathyxtran 's review for:

The Caiplie Caves by Karen Solie

3.0

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Thing creates thing beyond our compass // They confide in each other, but not in me //
Between silence and language omens proliferate // A queue of seeds in the ground //

Challenging poems that are so varied in form and expansive in subject matter, all the while connecting back to the caves, but all that really lingers for me is the distinctive sense of mood. Though, strangely, my favorites in the collection may be some of the more story-telling poems: "The Desert Fathers", "Tentsmuir Forest", "Mercenaries Know There's Always Room for Specialists in the Market", "Origin Story", "Kentigern and the Robin", "To the Extent a Tradition Can Be Said to Be Developed; It is More Accurate to Say It Can Be Clothed in Different Forms", "A Retreat", "A Lesson", "The Sharing Economy", and "Its paved road, which has all the appearance of a processional way, must have led from somewhere, to somewhere".