Trudeau fils, was shown on the TV news referring to “anxiety from global turbulence.” Greco’s anxiety is by contrast low-key. Very recently, our current Prime Minister, M. These are realistic geopolitical anxieties.Īlthough Greco has followed Auden’s six-part structure and borrowed his catchword, “Anxiety,” the very real geopolitical concerns still with us are not treated in any detail in her poems. Putin, in charge of Russia, territorially the largest country on earth yet anxiety remains about the possible use of atomic weapons by the leaders of half-developed countries with ambitions to seem very important, or, Heaven forfend, the terrorist groups, if they can get their blood-stained hands on the bomb.
The constant anxiety during the “Cold War” has now faded, even with the old KGB man, Mr. Her latest book of poems, Practical Anxiety, is in six parts or sections this suggests that Greco has read Auden’s Age of Anxiety(1947) that was organized into six “eclogues.” In fact, she quotes from Auden’s book as a sort of preface to her own: “The gods are wringing their great worn hands/ For their watchman is away, their world engine/ Creaking and cracking.”Īuden’s title is as striking as those lines recalling the enormous worry of the bare survival of civilization: survival after two world wars and the invention and use of the atomic bomb, linked to the new menace of the communist dictator Stalin’s possession of atomic secrets given to the Soviets by the ideologically motivated scientist spies. I enjoyed her live reading from these books in New Westminster last year. Heidi Greco is known already from her previous books of poetry, notably those about Amelia Earhart, A: The Amelia Poems (Lipstick Press, 2009) and Flightpaths (Caitlin, 2017). sometimes with all of these elements acting at once.” “ Practical Anxiety is a book of wonders and dreams, questions and calls to action, meditation, eulogy and prayer. Russell Thornton, author of The Hundred Lives In her detailing of “anxieties” that give her “practical” poems, in her sounding of clear notes of bewilderment, celebration, reflection, intense observation of other people and the natural world, and many-levelled love, Greco signs up her life under a scrupulous, subtle lyricism, with warmth and with never-failing charm.” Catherine Owen, author of The Day of the the Dead and Dear Ghost Greco rewrites the psalms, celebrates threatened “blood-ruddy” ecosystems, reminds us of the dangers in “clutching remotes instead of each other.” This collection of lyrical noticings can’t simply be summed up as “domestic,” but instead must be considered as a set of vital knowings from one fully alive woman’s life. “Heidi Greco’s poems in Practical Anxiety capture the recollected fears of childhood in the bowl of “bedtime hands,” and acknowledge, to an almost-honouring of, the irky angsts being an adult is amid its “skeltered” piles of unwashed dishes. “Heidi Greco’s abundantly generous new collection, Practical Anxiety, sings “praises to the light.” Not afraid to hold death in her open hands, Greco is also alive to the “happy slurry of life.” This is poetry of breadth and depth, shimmering with firefly-quick intelligence and imagination. They are a celebration of the quiet glory ensconced in the ‘practical’ nature of the everyday world, even though that world may often feel overwhelmingly filled with ‘anxiety.’ But even though many of them deal with the domestic world long considered the ‘domain’ of females, they reach well beyond the realm of the kitchen and tradition. There is no doubt that these are poems written by a woman. Boldly unafraid, they confront the realities of climate change, the desecration of habitat, some quiet truths about aging and death. These poems dwell in the hearth of domesticity, but they look beyond the confines of the home with clear eyes.