Genevieve Kaplan| Review of Being Many Seeds by Marilyn McCabe

Genevieve Kaplan is the author of (aviary) (Veliz Books, 2020), In the ice house (Red Hen Press, 2011), and three chapbooks. Her recent poems can be found in Faultline, Oversound, can we have our ball back?, and Poetry. A new chapbook, I exit the hallway and turn right, is forthcoming from above/ground press. Genevieve lives in southern California, where she edits the Toad Press International chapbook series, publishing contemporary translations of poetry and prose. More at https://genevievekaplan.com/.

A Folio of Chapbook Micro-Reviews
October 28, 2020
Edited by Stephanie Kaylor

Genevieve Kaplan

Review of Being Many Seeds by Marilyn McCabe

Being Many Seeds by Marilyn McCabe Grayson Books, 2020 For such a slim volume — just 13 pages of poems — Marilyn McCabe’s chapbook Being Many Seeds (Grayson Books, 2020) offers a lot of substance. Each page begins with an untitled short poem, an erasure of the poem, a further distillation of that same language, and then finally footnoted information about Teilhard de Chardin, a Jesuit priest. As such, a page might begin with a poem that describes how “evening blows papers around your step, / the hum of sidewalks pale and pocked” and follows “you” moving through a cityscape (11). As we progress down the page, we encounter an erasure of the poem we just read; the city disappears but “evening” remains and “blows // your hat with / stories // which / echo” (11). The third version of the poem, nearer the bottom of the page, reads in full “you are // the night” (11). Before we can turn the page to the next poem, though, McCabe offers a prose footnote: Teilhard was born in the Auvergne, a sparsely populated area of ancient volcanoes, wild valleys, werewolf tales, and old languages. Once could believe almost anything there (11). Being Many Seeds is so fascinating because it is multi-layered by design. Each poem is conversation with itself, as well as with the others in this volume; each poem is also in conversation with Teilhard as a philosopher and guide. The narrator of these pages questions life, wandering, wonder, and belief. She tells us “I came to every strange city” (10), “I have entered the sunlit pasture” (13), “I am holey” (16), and “I am only one / in a world” (19). McCabe’s chapbook describes a journey both introspective and world-wise, and it’s well-worth reading, and then returning to re-read again. Visit Grayson Books' Website

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