Taking Root

Susan McKnight is an administrator of the Courts Technology Integrated Justice Project at the Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General.

Elizabeth Zetlin works as a visual artist when not writing poetry. Her
artwork consists of designs and words on gourds, garlic cloves, and a
life-sized birchbark cone. She is currently working on an installation
called “The Punctuation Field,” which will consist of a manuscript
and a meadow. It is only fitting that her poetry should be entrenched in
the natural world—for example, the everyday gardening events that she
brings into her personal relationship in loving and provocative ways. In
“Transplant Shock,” she equates the wilting that occurs when
transplanting a plant to the ache of missing her loved one when
separated for a few weeks. The progression is natural and totally
acceptable. At other times, she uses gardening terms and practices to
explain personal behaviors and characteristics, as in “Edges”:
“You find you need them / not just to keep the grass out / but to
separate yourself from / what others want you for.” Several of her
poems (such as “Target Practice”) propose a more erotic outcome.

Interspersed throughout the book are prose pieces that tell stories.
“Listen to the Echoes” relates how certain poetic phrases come to
the poet as she is working in her garden. “Budded Bla” is a
reminiscence of her grandfather. “An Angry Soup” is an interesting
personal moment shared over dinner that ends with “nothing more than
two people nestling close in the night, like amber jars cooling on the
kitchen counter.”

Zetlin finds a correlation between every natural event and her human
life, and ably translates this into words for others to share.