Knife on Snow by Alice Major

Something I’ve always admired about Alice Major’s writing is the way she manages to make me think. She does this in super-specific under-the-microscope ways, but also just as grandly on a scale that’s universal. And she achieves both of these in her latest collection of poems, Knife on Snow.

Mostly constituting yet another wake-up call to the climate emergency, the poems lead us back to the most ancient past when wormlike creatures oozed in primal mud, making stops along the way through history.

In the first section, she uses references from the long epic poems (edda) of the Norse tradition which contain prophecies of world-ending events that include fire and rising waters. We’ve certainly seen plenty of fires already this summer, at least one of them predicted to possibly burn through the coming winter.

                                                Now forests flare
                season after season   in summer heats
                as continents   consume themselves.

But the references aren’t all from so long ago; Alberta resident Major nudges us to recall the massive fire at Fort McMurray. As for rising waters, ask the citizens of Tuvalu or the Maldives; it won’t be long until major cities admit this threat more openly.

The second section draws upon references from Roman times, and proceeds with death blows, falling meteors, colonization and the decimation of those thundering herds of buffalo—the many ways we have warred across the centuries.

                This toss of aggression
                completes some series of purposeful acts
                whose history I cannot know in full.

                Anxious colonist, I lift my hands
                seeking some other augury,
                a message from the realms beyond anger,
                some small omen of hope.

The third section, called ‘Dreams of anger’ brings us poems that are both the most personal (childhood memories, recollections of her mother, reactions to protestors) and also ones that are the most science- and math-based, the latter of which is evidenced in this stanza from a prose poem, ‘Path integral’:

I want to poke around inside the brain, unroll the
wrinkled cortex into a flat, creased sponge and map anger’s
coordinates. Along the x-axis: half a billion years of animals
trying to survive by fighting back. Along the y-axis: the
logarithmic scale of primate generations, social structures
becoming as convoluted as a coral reef, anger rearing up
when others break the rules. And z, the dimension of the
individual life, its traumas and tender spots.

That a poet should be so grounded in mathematics and science will come as no surprise to readers of Major’s body of work. Those not yet familiar with her previous books may wish to track down her 2011 collection of essays, Intersecting Sets: A Poet Looks at Science, which reveals her “…lifelong love of science, from physics and geology to evolution and cognitive science.”

The final section, ‘Travels in the solar system’ is exactly that—a tour through the planets, moons and comets that comprise the system we live in. All the poems here rely upon haibun as their form. Each offers beautifully presented odd facts, anchored by a bit of haiku which, in the case of the piece about Earth, bears surprising weight for such a few lines:

“Bleep, bleep, bleep.” An SOS
broadcast to the solar system—
“We need help here. Over.”

Interspersed between each of the sections are contemporary musings which she calls ‘End times’, numbering each. These range from thoughts on aging to the pleasure of sitting beside her cat, and further on, to an appreciation of her eyes, then her home, birds, and change. Each of these serves as a kind of marker offering the reader a breath before ploughing into the next phase of history—the next ‘chapter’ of the book—a book that I am certain will encourage you to relish her delicious flights of language while it can’t help but cause you to think.

Alice Major has published twelve collections of poetry, two novels for young adults and an award-winning collection of essays about poetry and science. She came to Edmonton the long way round. She grew up in Dumbarton, Scotland – a small town on the banks of the Clyde, not far from Glasgow. Her family came to Canada when she was eight, and she grew up in Toronto before coming west to work as a reporter.

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Turnstone Press (April 1 2023)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 96 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0888017685
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0888017680

Heidi Greco

Website

Heidi Greco lives and writes in Surrey, BC on the territory of the Semiahmoo Nation and land that remembers the now-extinct Nicomekl People. Her most recent book, Glorious Birds (from Vancouver's Anvil Press) is an extended homage to one of her favourite films, Harold and Maude, which celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2021. More info at her website, heidigreco.ca

(Photo credit: George Omorean)