This was okay. It didnt really propel me to read nor did it deter me. Overall it wasn't for me, but I could see why somebody else would love it.

This is my introduction to Gillian Sze and let me tell you, she now has a reader for life. Each of her poems teem with consciousness and her writing comes across as effortless in the grace and fluidity with which it flows. This is definitely a collection of poetry that I will feature in my store.

(3.5 stars) Gillian Sze is a Montreal-based poet with five previous collections to her name. Panicle contains many responses to films, photographs, and other poems, including some classical Chinese verse. Travel and relationships are recurring sources of inspiration, and scenes are often described as if they are being captured by a camera. There are a number of prose paragraphs, including the “Sound No. 1–5” series. As lovely as the writing is, I found few individual poems to latch onto. Two favorites were “Nocturne” (which opens “When I can’t sleep I think of the lupines that grow in the country, their specific palette, a mix of disregard and generosity” [the line breaks are unclear in my Kindle book]) and “Dawning.” My favorite lines were “memory is a wicker chair that creaks in the wind” (from “To the Photographer in the Countryside”) and “I age / as it is typically done: slowly / unconsciously / surprisingly” (from the title poem). Releases September 19th.

Panicle by Gillian Sze is the author's ninth poetry collection. Her work includes Peeling Rambutan (Gaspereau Press, 2014) and Redrafting Winter (BuschekBooks, 2015), both of which were finalists for the QWF A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry. Sze's work has appeared in a number of literary journals and has received awards such as the University of Winnipeg Writers' Circle Prize and the 2011 3Macs carte blanche Prize.

A panicle is defined as any loose, diversely branching flower cluster. Oats are a common example of this type of plant. Sze refers to lupines, a panicle, in her collection. Lupines are typically violet or blue which brings in another theme in the collection. Blue is the color of the sky but in this collection, it is also the color of water. Water is presented throughout the collection as rain, ice, hail, the water cycle, a flooded ditch, stagnant water in a paper cup with a daisy, ripples in the cove, and a waterfall.

In the first section, there are five poems with the partial title Sound. "Sound No. 1", one of my favorite poems in the collection, carries the theme of blue to a different sense:

When you push through the water, past the gawping fish that realize
you don’t belong, everything resounds with your final cause. It
sounds blue and it comes from all directions.

The poems in the collection are narrative in nature and most are inspired by a quote, a poet, or piece of art. Some poems are descriptions of scenes. There are a series of tableau poems and a series called "Seven Takes." The third "take" provides a nice ananolgy, in parable form, of what we are destined to become in life. Much like a panicle plant with many flowers branching off the same stalk life has many branches that we can choose from yet all are interconnected through the main stalk.

The third section is a tribute to a Roland Giguère work with supporting artwork. The collection ends with the title poem "Panicle". Here is a convergence of the complete work. Much like the climax of a story, we reach the high point of the poet's work. The themes and ideas throughout the collection are brought together in an artful closing. Sze gives the reader a collection filled with imagery and imagination and invites the reader to look deeper. An inspired and inspiring collection.





Available September 17, 2017

Poetry is always refreshing since it requires us to look at our space dimensions and our personalities with a different face. Nice book to take on a trip.

Eloquent, poignant, divine - something that will leave itself etched on your skin.

This poetry collection was everything I expected and more, so much more! Throughout my reading, I was in awe of Sze's capability to turn everyday events into something complicated, deeper than an ocean and amazing like an untold famous tale. The raw emotions encapsulated in every poetry piece made it easy to connect with the author's words - I danced with every cheery poem and cried with every melancholic one!

I have an affinity for poetry with exquisite vocabulary. It makes the poetry sound formal, mysterious, and it makes me feel like the poet is true to their words. The fact that this collection included that made me instantly love it. However, this in no way made the poetry less tangible to be grasped by non-readers of the genre - take my word on this one, I've read my fair share of elusive poetry that goes over your head! The structure of the book was amazing - divided into four portions, it really made everything seem precise and clear, giving a sense of direction to the reader. Special mention to the "Guillemets" portion of the book because of how it combined poetry with art (hint: sketches in the book - what even!).

Sze effortlessly made use of a variety of poetry forms (experimental ones included) which kept the collection refreshing and captivating as something new popped up every time I scrolled to the next page. However, one common trait shared by every poem in this collection was they seemed to have a soul of their own, calculatingly put into perfectly crafted words by Sze - it really is something that resonated with me and put me into a literary trance.

Overall, I feel great that I picked this up because it's good to have that feeling when you can't describe how wonderful you found something, whilst pushing yourself to describe it, if that makes any sense.

This poetry collection is wonderful and a true treat. Sometimes I encounter a book that is "delicious" - the words all have bite and taste. These poems have that bite and taste, but also sound and sharpness and softness and scent and substance and more. Sze plays with forms (for example, at times writing in the styles of other poets such as William Carlos Williams) so as the reader you are never bored and are excited to turn the page to see what is next.

I recieved an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Not my kind of poetry, but someone out there will love it.