Celtic Tree Calendar: Poem Cycle

Olga Costopoulos teaches English at the University of Alberta.

This is a very difficult book to review. Every time I sit down to write
about it, I get lost in it again, and don’t really want to return to a
mundane world of judgments and such. Beryl Baigent has given us a
delicious book, filled with the wisdom of the Earth and the sharp
perceptions of a first-rate poet. The book, beautifully produced on soft
brown paper, is a kind of Celtic I Ching. If informs and mystifies and
delights and illuminates all at once. The writing is partly in prose and
partly in verse. The book has the air of authority. And that, alas, is
where its problems arise. On page 51 we are told, with no trace of irony
or leg-pulling, that “The botanical name for the Beech is Fagus
sylvatica. Fagus is Latin for ‘to eat,’ and sylvatica means
‘woodland.’” (“Fagus” actually means “beech.”) There are
other minor irritants, such as the New Age feel to some of the prose.
But the poems are the heart of the book, and Celtic Tree Calendar
deserves to be read for them.