The Time of the Great Singing by Elizabeth Philips (Freehand Books 2025)

 Jan Zwicky, on the back of Elizabeth Philips' exquisitely lyrical collection, states that this is a book "that does not distinguish between elegy and celebration." Now, although I rarely appreciate the flawed art of blurbing, not only is this a beautiful sentence, but it is entirely accurate in its assessment of the subject matter and intent of Philips' poems. Whether the lyrics delve into the loss of parents or the loss of trees, the focal points interweave with each other, so that a mother's dementia is gentled by the soothing sight of a "freshet of green light" (The Last June) or a recognition of the "difficult last years" of her father are lifted by another memory, that of discovering a well together (right away, Heaney is echoed) and their faces being reflected in the watery "aspen-inflected sky" (Just). There is a magic here of consolations that rarely slip into easy-solution triteness. 

Much of this transcendent effect is due to Philips' ability to harness tempo. Often, a form, however so-called free, that doesn't seem to attend to its set stanzaic structure irks me, but these pieces that shift like the seasons between couplets, triads and then utterly erratic lines, often swooping towards the right margin, mostly work. If you have an ear, and you can understand the breath play behind enjambing lines, then there is no questionable hitch of why for the reader. It's all satisfying flow. 

Although I understand why the mother/father poems might be in a separate section or even the St Peter's Abbey retreat pieces where a priest makes honey because, "He has had enough of salt" (From the Sweetness to the Sting), I still think, speaking of loving the flow, that there are a few too many titular segments, interruptive, at times of one's capacity for entrance and remaining. Regardless, apart from the rare over-personification of a river marrying geese (Elegy for the Willows), The Time of the Great Singing stays with eloquent, pastoral details, in the manner of Elizabeth Bishop or William Stafford. Birds, trees, walks and loved ones are all held within a painte
rly glow of aural attention. Listen to "the sapsucker's black/verso...against the maple's/lichenous hide" (Nine Birds and a Night Without You), the moment the bird "check-check-checks on principle, even though/her chicks are fledged./The catch?" (Breaking Cover) or the scene of "The Work Bench," equivalently resonant with its fatherly things "heavy with specificity, linchpin, bell pulley" and how they proffer a "little peace...palpable beneath the palm.." 

Meditative in energy, and commemorative in intention, the poems in The Time of the Great Singing remind us that poetry is about connection, to the fragilities and persistences in others, the past, and the encompassing earth.