The Flicker Tree: Okanagan Poems

by Nancy Holmes

Poetry. How do we learn to be where we live? How can a 21st-century mind, saturated with the culture and metaphors of contemporary life, connect to the natural world that surrounds us? In Nancy Holmes's new book of poetry, these questions are asked of her home, the Okanagan valley in the southern interior of British Columbia. In these poems, as Holmes comes to terms with personal grief, she tries to find consolation in the place she shares with other beings. Holmes's poetry looks for relationships with the prickly pear cacti, bluebunch wheatgrass, the black bears, the coyotes, and the northern flickers. She seeks to embed herself in the geography and consciousness of this arid Western landscape, one of the most endangered ecosystems in Canada, a landscape of great beauty and spiritual power with its volcanic glaciated mountains and fragile long lakes. The result is poetry that is both elegiac and humorous, with a vision often skewed by the lenses of mass media, anxiety, and the obsessions of the contemporary world. Sometimes disturbed and questioning, sometimes delighted and awed, sometimes troubled by the history of settlers and indigenous peoples, the poems explore our complicity in the destruction of, and our love for, the wild animals, plants, and places around us.

Genres: Poetry, Canada

100 pages, Paperback

First published September 15, 2012

Reviews

[Julie]

5.0/10

What is the opposite of serendipity? The dictionary states, "bad luck" ... but I might suggest Nancy Holmes, in my case.

I was doing a search for The Poetry of Yehuda Amichai because I've been itching to discover him, after Julie's love affair awakened me to a poet I'd not read.

Our library being what it is, I'm surprised to find even Dickens ... let alone Yehuda Amichai, but I thought I'd give it a whirl anyway. Nope. No such luck. But it did spit out two other possibilities: in the way that goodreads shoots out non-sequiturs. You know the kind I mean: Because you liked Charles Dickens, you will also like Paul Coelho's Eleven-Minutes-To-Nowhere. They never make any sense. Much like my experience with Nancy Holmes.

Not having Amichai on their shelves, Overdrive thoughtfully suggested: Because you like Amichai, you might also like ... and I was presented with a short story collection by John Updike and this book by Nancy Holmes.

???!!

Too bad.

I was in the mood for poetry, but I didn't get anything near what I was hoping for.

I didn't find much inspiration or love in these pages, and I should leave it at that.

But I can't.

Because ...

Her poems are described as "lyrical" and "luminous" and blah-blah-blah.

They are not.

Holmes's words are rather workaday warbling, considering the enormously appealing subject matter with which she deals: the natural world of the Okanagan valley. How can one go wrong here? One opens one's mouth to speak, and a poem should emerge about the Okanagan. It's not hard to do.

I found her poetry flat and uninspiring; bromidic rather than lyrical; warmed over rather than incandescent.

I did enjoy one poem, the Red-Tailed Hawk, which is a poem she wrote upon her father's death.

The rest are rather "just OK" (my own words fail me here, in the meh-ness of her poems), and one poem draws a decided "gah!', in

Watching the Coopers' Hawk Nest
(for Lori Mairs)

One Nikon D3100 digital SLR with zoom lens,
one HD Sony video camera
one Bushnell Legend Ultra-HD birding scope,
and two decent pairs
of high-power binoculars,
a pot of coffee on the stove,
and we're ready for surveillance
of this family of terrorists.

I'm sorry to say this wasn't a serendipitous find for me as I was just in the mood for some good poetry.

The search for Amichai continues.

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading poetry created for the city and land I live in. Some poems I didn’t relate to or understand fully but liked the poem about the bear and the butterflies!

[Andrea Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection of poems about the natural world was brilliant. Nancy Holmes has definitely captured the place that I live in. It is the natural world and man's invasion of that world that has affected the balance. This poet and resident of the area gives the reader insight and pause for thought. I definitely wan to purchase this book and will do in the near future to read these again.