ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Meghan Sterling lives and teaches workshops in Portland, Maine. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Rattle, Rust & Moth, SWIMM, The Night Heron Barks, Cider Press Review, Inflectionist Review, Sky Island Journal, Westchester Review, Pine Hills Review, Mom Egg Review, Menacing Hedge, River Heron Review and many others. She is Associate Poetry Editor of the Maine Review, and winner of Sweet Literary’s 2021 annual poetry contest. Her collection These Few Seeds is out now from Terrapin Books. Read her work at meghansterling.com.
July 21, 2021
Edited by Stephanie Kaylor
Edited by Stephanie Kaylor
Monuments of Abundance: A Review of Mast Year by Katherine Hagopian-Berry
Mast Year
Katherine Hagopian-Berry
Littoral Books, 2020
The natural world has always been ripe for poetic exploration. Every poet worth her salt will make a go at peering into the splendor of the earth and evoking the many mysteries of this sublime and frightening world. We think of Mary Oliver, of Louise Gluck. But not all poetry collections that revere the natural world are created equal. Occasionally, you find one that makes a deep impression, one that changes you. In this superb book, Katherine Hagopian-Berry takes her turn, but with a difference; hers is a compassionate celebration of the richness of seasons reflected in both the human experience and the physical world, and Mast Year (Littoral Books, 2020) dives deep into the miracles that surround us at every stage of our lives: powerfully, with joy and sorrow in equal measure.
A mast year is one in which, "the fruit falls, a carpet of sweetness/on the pine needles, on the dust dirt road/ and we all scurry to taste," and Hagopian-Berry marvels at this, among the many treasures the earth and the people in it deliver to us in heart-rending excess — the love of one's family, of the decadent splendor of a Maine autumn and spring, of the daily losses we all experience, both small and monumental. Hagopian-Berry rejoices in it all: death becomes a celebration of life, "Before they launch infant/leaves to light, sugar/maples cradle all the colors of their dying," and life echoes of death, "stoke the half light of loss/into halos, passage enough/for our ghosts/to burn through."
In her poem, "Coda", Hagopian-Berry warns her reader to move carefully through this dangerous dichotomy of dark and light:
Beloved, caution, the body can split open
and reveal a flock of miracles:
unwrap them like mushrooms
a shaman has handed you
on ruined mountains
heavy like water carvings
embroidered with light.
And we do, aware of the harrowing knife’s edge we, and the flora and fauna that populate this book, have to walk to survive. In her poem, "Open Season", she explores the dangers she knows humans pose to an innocent doe:
The doe is standing
In the middle of our mountain road
A yearling, barely old enough for fear…
When she runs
I am relieved.
We have done our part.
We have posted signs
Bright orange on the pale trees.
We have said no hunting here.
Just as the doe relies on humans to protect it, the poem explores the way the speaker works to protect her own child, as the speaker checks, "every alley, every dark parked car…when danger/stalks my own daughter…" Survival is not guaranteed to anything — the woodchuck, the caterpillar, the doe, the aging grandmother, the young daughter. Hagopian-Berry exalts this mother's fear for the lives of the unprotected into a hymn.
As the title promises, the lavish and exquisite language of these poems elevates the mundane into significance and the significant into the mystical. After reading Mast Year, you won't look at the world around you, or your life, the same way.
Visit Littoral Books' Website
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
