New York Times Reviews Karen Solie's Latest Poetry Collection

David Orr reviews Canadian poet Karen Solie's latest collection, The Caiplie Caves, in the New York Times's Book Review section. Her fifth collection, it's also, Orr notes, "Solie’s first project book." More: 

In the poetry world, this vague-sounding description has a very specific meaning; it refers to collections in which many or all of the poems, rather than being about the usual variety of poetic stimuli (trees, exes, dead relatives), instead relate to a unitary subject, which will typically be a hefty political or historical matter rather than, for instance, laundry or houseplants. The advantage to the project book is that its contents are easy to describe (“readily identifiable”) even if the individual poems are filled with airy poeticisms (“mystifying”). If it sounds as if project books are usually tedious, that’s not the case — some are quite good. But in an era in which poets often need to produce collections in order to remain employed, it’s reasonable to look skeptically on a form that can resemble a paint-by-numbers kit.

The “project” here is twofold: First, we have the story of a seventh-century Scottish hermit named Ethernan who supposedly withdrew to the titular caves (which are about 20 minutes southeast of St. Andrews) to decide whether to open a monastery; and second, there is the history and culture of the coast of Fife. About a third of the book is written in the voice of Ethernan; the rest consists of lyrics wandering from Kilrenny to Tentsmuir Forest (and occasionally non-Scottish locales) under Solie’s own command.

Read on at the New York Times.