I had never heard of Saint Ethernan, and this poetry collection offered an unusual introduction to the Scottish hermit.

Thank you to the publisher for the digital copy via Netgalley.

It seems like, even with the passage of time, I still struggle with Solie's work. I appreciated "The Caiplie Caves" on a technical and ideological level, but I struggle to say that I ENJOYED the poems. There were a couple that gave me a sense of wholeness, a kind of complete satisfaction you get after finishing something and wanting to sit with it a little. I also got a very strong affective response from "The Caiplie Caves." Solie activates the senses and strikes up a sort of "fresh" mental image that is something like sea and wet moss and moisture, even when talking about people, even in the present. Maybe I'll appreciate Solie's work better the more I read and branch out in poetry. For the moment, this collection was impressive in its ambitions and intentions, but not the most captivating in its execution.

The picaresque journey of the 7th century searcher for meaning, St Ethernan underpins this volume, and through her use of his saga, Solie lights up the east coast of Scotland. Fife, in these poems, is the seat of physical and spiritual yearnings across centuries of darkness, tragedy, invasion, settlement and development.

Place names dot the narrative: Crail, Anstruther, Kilrenny, Tentsmuir Forest, Cockenzie Power Station, Pittemweem and the ever-present May Island, shrine of St Ethernan.

May Island is also the setting of the tragic ‘Whose Deaths Were Recorded Officially As Casualties of “The Battle Of May Island”’; in this ‘battle’ Solie outlines in a restrained voice, the terrible series of events in early 1918 that led to the loss of five Royal Navy ships and at least 104 fatalities. The poem ends,

'104 killed, a conservative estimate
No enemy engaged but error
In the historical present, a modest commemorative monument
With its back to the sea.'

This terse, emotionally laden tonality is present throughout the volume as in Crail Autumn:

'....the rented flat, its walls
Three feet thick, stone, and 200 years
Older than Canada'.

Much is expressed in these short asides: the plant life that, ‘fragile and invasive...gazes out to sea/as its character bends inward.’ Or the warning over the ‘deadliest mushroom’ in ‘Tentsmuir Forest,

'. . .Her children found her
On the kitchen floor, plate on the table,
Pan on the stove. A life foraging in these woods,

She should have known better.'

Where the life of St Ethernan fits into these various stories is not always easy to determine. Perplexity about the mixed fortunes of humankind is one link; geographic location is another anchoring point. The saint's tale is a useful umbrella for drawing together this rich and varied collection from a strong, visionary poet who has the ability to move through mood, tone, form and voice in a unique manner. This is a five star collection.

I was given a digital galley of "The Caiplie Caves," in exchange for a fair review. This is not a book you can breeze through. It demands focused attention and some understanding of the subject-- the life of Saint Ethernan, a hermit, who resided near Kilrenny, near the Caiplie Caves, on the Scottish coast-- to be able to follow Solie's poetic journey from around the mid-seventh century to today. Why this rather unknown figure to choose between a life of contemplation or a life of engagement? It might be Solie's interest, outlined in the preface, in Ethernan's "poverty of supernatural accomplishments."
In other words, a rather common man, who must survive like a mortal among poverty, famine, wars, just like in our humanness we must make our choices among the threats that confront us in the twenty-first century. ("neither am I that type of acute person who leads others/into battle or inspires love.") And yet Solie's acute poetic vision is still a salve for the modern anxieties that seem to continually confront us--war, environmental degradation, materialism, among others-- so that even if "(she) offer(s) cold, the season working as it should/ loneliness, love working as it should/pain, the body working as it should/and failure."--there is still solace and a kind of beauty by doing the hard work of witnessing.
In the poem, "Plenitude," she gives the scientific name of a plant along with the other common names of plants, whereby this ability to understand both the science and the art of what she is describing allows her (in my opinion) to earn what otherwise might be a false salvation at the end of the poem, "...the/poppies you loved/parked like an ambulance by the barley/field." There are anti-anxiety and sleep medicines like Ativan, Ambien and Quaaludes in Solie's poems--which are obviously pharmaceutical remedies for our worries, but then toward the end in "Stinging Nettle Appreciation," she writes "the agonies are products the/ ancients say. Not voids or defects./Once they exist , they will always/exist/ Comforts can only lie alongside/them." This hard-earned wisdom suggests that whether we embrace hermitic-like removal from modern life or active engagement we must still endure our travails. Whereas modern remedies might appeal to those engaged in "active life," the very next poem "Hermits" addresses survival in the "contemplative life"--"Warmth activates the sugars/and sugars galley/in the gorse, in the flowers/it sees with,".... Are they/converting/ sugars of their loneliness/to conviction?"
In conclusion, these are timeless poems, no matter their historical or contemporary settings, where Solie's democratic gift is to show us that "objects of attention/ma(ke) more of (us)," not only just the poet but for us as well whether one chooses asceticism or modern engagement with the world.

Before I go into this book, I have to admit that this is very hard to read especially for someone who doesn't read a lot of poems. Although recently I have read quite a few that I really enjoyed but this one was a struggle.
BUT if you enjoy poems that explore changes in time and seasons, power, the hand of the mighty, oppression, and the strength of belief, this is the book for you. I gave this book a 2.9 out of 5 stars
I enjoyed a few poems such as 'A visitation', 'A lesson', and 'Clarity' and would highly recommend you read them.
A few excerpts
"nothing exists in the darkness that doesn't in the light"
As long as you believe everything you proclaim can come to fruition