Polychronicon

Ellen Pilon is a library assistant in the Patrick Power Library at Saint
Mary’s University in Halifax.

In her prefatory note, Polly Fleck explains the title of her book and the organization of poems. “The Polychronicon is a dynamic container of poems; a container in the same way that the psyche is said to be a container of the process which responds to experience with an emotional reaction (POLY), with intellectual consideration (CHRON), and sometimes, eventually, with a spiritual comprehension (ICON).” The 36 poems are organized into three groups — Poly, Chron, and Icon — of twelve poems each, each group’s twelve poems clustered in threes. “It is hoped that the reader will be able to look beyond individual poems and their specific subject-matter to the process of the poet’s understanding represented by each triad of poems.” Fleck’s excellence in her art has allowed her to accomplish this expressed goal. Somehow the triads of poems — the three groups Poly, Chron, and Icon, and each triad within the groups — do indeed suggest emotional reaction, intellectual consideration, and spiritual comprehension. Partly because of the structure (for example, a poem such as “Coming through the Eye” is the Icon of a cluster but in the Chron group), the distinctions blur. Fleck often associates personal experience with Poly, universal with Icon. For example, in “I Lie,” the poet of the first stanza lies dead, a “still-life composition, me, dead, /sleeping, /I lie.” In the second stanza, she lies thinking of her love. The second part of the triad, “Snowfocus,” like many other Chrons, is more narrative; it tells a story. “Mothering” expresses a universal, the every-mother envisioning the lives of her children after they have left home. The reader does transcend the subject matter of a poem with empathy, and by responding to the music of the verse, the wit of the words.

The specific subject matter of each poem should not be underrated in the search beyond. Fleck’s themes are interesting. Each poem stands alone as a work of art. Words roll off Fleck’s pen into beautiful, orchestrated verses. She positions her words carefully in their lines for proper stress. She learns uncontrived word craft from Hopkins, as in “Snowfocus”: “Adaminnocent,” “leavesbody,” “snowterror.” Her images are strong and precise. The poems are not easy to read or to understand, but enough is glimpsed first time through that the reader is caught, eager to reread over and over.