The Long Cold Green Evenings of Spring

James Deahl, of Mekler & Deahl Publishers, is the author of Poetry
Markets for Canadians, Under the Watchful Eye: Poetry and Discourse,
Even This Land Was Born of Light, and Mix Six.

The title of this book of poems illustrates one of the more obvious
problems Elisabeth Harvor has with poetry: too many adjectives. When a
poet writes a short story, the result is usually poetic fiction. But
when a fiction writer turns to poetry, the result can too often be a
story made to look like a poem. Harvor is, at heart, a writer of
stories, and very good ones, too. This leads her to burden her poems
with extra adjectives to make them seem more “poetic.” She also
tries to establish an elegant distance between herself and her subjects,
a more troubling problem. Her poetry, while very private, lacks passion
and intensity.

Successful writers of the personal poem—Elizabeth Bishop and Robert
Lowell, for example—are able to establish a common ground with their
readers. Thus, elements of the personal life of the poet can speak to
the reader by becoming, through the medium of the poem, universal. We
find in Elizabeth Bishop aspects of our own lives, and are enriched by
the experience. But this fails to happen in much of Harvor’s work,
because the personal remains private.

Like the fairy-tale coach that is transformed into a pumpkin at
midnight, Harvor’s poems tend to become prose when they exceed two
pages, something that happens most of the time in this collection. The
exception is a short sequence of poems on childhood pneumonia. Here her
distance from her subject vanishes, and the reader can “feel” as
well as see the poem. This does not mean that her other work lacks
interest. “The Damp Hips of the Women” does offer interesting
content and several striking lines, despite being, in places, prose
resembling poetry—a flaw nowhere more in evidence than in “More
Safety Than the World Can Ever Give.”

Most of these poems could have been cut back; they are almost all
overblown. This is regrettable, because when Harvor does go short the
result can be quite fine. The two best pieces in the collection—“Her
Children or God” and “I Dream of the Afterlife”—show that she
can write powerful poetry, immediate in presentation and universal in
content. But they are also two of the shortest poems in her book.