This May Be the Year: Poetry by Carole Giangrande
Reviewed by Lisa Timpf
Images of birds, bees, and gardens nestle alongside thoughts on loss, childhood memories, and reflections on aging in Carole Giangrande’s 50-poem collection This May Be the Year. Eleven of the poems have been previously published (some in slightly different form) in The New Quarterly, Prairie Fire, Queens Quarterly, Grain, and other venues. This May Be the Year is broken into four sections: Birdmind, Breath of Ghosts, Memory’s Shadow, and In the Long Grass.
“A resonant collection that celebrates life and nature with vivid and original images.”
Many of the poems reference the natural world, doing so with both specificity and originality. Giangrande doesn’t just talk about birds, she brings them to life, depicting species like goldfinches, hawks, wrens, snowy owls, and hermit thrushes with the precision and familiarity of a practiced observer, while at the same time offering original metaphors and images. For example, the poem “In Central Park” notes “All afternoon the circling hawk / peels away sky, / opens the curtain of her wings.”
“Kingfisher,” written from the viewpoint of the title bird, begins, “Flight is the embroidery / of my body, its pattern and design. / I am woven of song . . .” Later in the poem come the lines “My eggs / are sunlit, my young a dazzle / of longing and hunger.”
Giangrande shows compassion toward her natural neighbours. In “Hermit Thrush,” she encounters a hermit thrush that has fallen on the stoop after being attacked by a hawk:
. . . his spirit seems close enough
for tenderness. I touch him, tell him to be on his way,
feeling the softness of his breast, sorrow
and daybreak, death and the whole of the sky.
“Spring, Unsettled” describes the way spring assaults senses dulled by winter:
Peer into spring’s kaleidoscope, its weird amalgam,
gorgeous download of colour, the shrieking apparitions
of blue jays and cardinals, the woodpecker rapping,
the noiseless bomb-load of gold forsythia—
This May Be the Year also includes reflections on loss and aging, “Graham” includes the lines, “Speech, touch, what do they hold? We’d spoken / a week ago, now he was silenced.” In “Beloved,” the narrator notes of a couple: “They don’t believe / they are old now.”
Other poems take us to a dreamlike, mysterious place. “Vito the Hairdresser” includes the lines, “. . . he takes the scissors, trimming / the rough edges of memory, shaping / your thick dark nimbus of hair.” Later in the poem, the hairdresser “. . . pushes a broom across the floor, / gathers the split ends, / sweeps up who or what you were.”
Some poems include memories of a Manhattan childhood. There are also darker, sadder reflections on the ways in which the world is changing, and poems like “This May Be the Year” include layers of foreboding:
It’s crossed my mind
that this may be the year when trees
will not turn green. Chilled and shy,
they might tuck their leaves inside memory,
and refuse to bless us.
World events inspire some poems. “Field Marks (for the victims of the El Paso shooting)” includes the lines, “Unless you place / your hand inside the wound, you will not believe.” “After the Chelsea Bombing” says
Pass me a slice of the lost world.
At least no one died.
The coffee tastes ashen. The milk
is spoiled. It could happen anywhere.
And yet, there is hope. In “Worker Bee,” Giangrande writes,
Even in plague, Earth turns,
awakening each season,
axis tipped toward summer
and honeybees.
The poem goes on to note the way both the gardener and the bee “hover inside / the same mysterious hope.”
A resonant collection that celebrates life and nature with vivid and original images, This May Be the Year makes for an enjoyable, richly textured read for nature lovers and poetry fans alike.
About the Author
Carole Giangrande was born and raised in the New York City area, and came to Canada to study at the University of Toronto. She's worked as a broadcast journalist for CBC Radio, a Writer-in-Residence and as a teacher of journalism and political science, and she's given readings at Harbourfront, Hart House and the Banff Centre for the Arts. Her fiction, articles and reviews have appeared in Grain, New Quarterly, Descant, Canadian Forum, Matrix, The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star and Books in Canada. Her poetry has been published in Queens Quarterly, Grain, Spiritus, The New Quarterly, Braided Way, Mudlark and Prairie Fire. She's married and lives in Toronto where she enjoys birding and photography.
About the Reviewer
Lisa Timpf lives in Simcoe, Ontario, where she writes poetry, book reviews, short stories, and creative nonfiction. Lisa’s speculative poetry collections Cats and Dogs in Space (2025) and In Days to Come (2022) are available from Hiraeth Publishing. Lisa is a member of SF Canada and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association. You can find out more about Lisa’s writing projects at http://lisatimpf.blogspot.com/. Lisa is also on Bluesky, @lisatimpf.bsky.social
Book Details
Publisher: Inanna Publications and Education Inc
Publication date: Aug. 15, 2025
Language: English
Print length: 70 pages
ISBN-10: 1834210062
ISBN-13: 978-1834210063