tender gravity

  

I received a copy of this release from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Title: tender gravity 

Author: Marybeth Holleman

Publisher: Boreal Books

Release Date: 8.9.22

Publisher’s Summary 

tender gravity charts Marybeth Holleman's quest for relationship to the more-than-human world, navigating her childhood in North Carolina to her life in Alaska, with deep time in remote land and seascapes. Always the focus is on what can be found by attention to the world beyond her own human skin, what can be found there as she negotiates loss--the loss of beloved places, wild beings, her younger brother. "do not think," she says to her mother, "that i love a bear more than my brother. / think instead that i cannot distinguish / the variations in / the beat of a heart." Inevitably, solace is found in the wild world: "step back toward that joy-sap rising, step back / into the only world that is." In a narrative arc of seeking, falling, and finding, we hear in Holleman's exquisitely attentive immersion clear reverberations of Mary Oliver, of Linda Hogan, of Walt Whitman. These poems of grief and celebration pulse in and out, reaching to the familiar moon and out to orphan stars of distant galaxies, then pull close to a small brown seabird and an on-the-knees view of a tiny bog plant.

My Review

I enjoyed these vignettes of nature and glimpses into the author's journeys, both physical and emotional. Holleman transports readers into the beautiful wilderness to expose the breakdown of ecosystems (altered migration patterns of walruses and the relocation of birds affected by oil spills) and then sweeps our eyes up to the wonder of the stars and comets, before pulling us close to her as she grieves her brother's murder. My favorite section is from "In the Garden, Early May"

Who is to say how a day’s best spent? At the end of a life, what remains? A few scattered pages— some of them read— maybe one bright phrase that clings to the world immortal— like the seeds of birch so many and small, yet each may grow into a tree taller than a library, and as useful. 

Marybeth Holleman is author of The Heart of the Sound, coauthor of Among Wolves, and coeditor Crosscurrents North, among others. Pushcart Prize nominee and Siskiyou Prize finalist, she’s published in venues including Orion, The Guardian, Christian Science Monitor, Sierra, and North American Review. She taught women’s studies and creative writing at University of Alaska and held artist residencies at Mesa Refuge, Hedgebrook, and Denali National Park. Raised in North Carolina’s Smokies, she transplanted to Alaska’s Chugach Mountains after falling head over heels for Prince William Sound two years before the oil spill. She lives in Anchorage, Alaska.