Visual Music, a review of Lyrical Years, by Gary Grossman. A Review by Peter Mladinic

The world is more connected than it seems—Gary Grossman

‘Lyrical Years’ is a collection of poems in which the extraordinary lies beneath the ordinary. In its concerns for family and the natural world it is reminiscent of the poems of Gary Snyder and Wendell Berry. Like those poets who made their mark in the second half of the twentieth century, Gary Grossman has lived in Snyder’s California and lives in Berry’s southern region of the United States. Gary Grossman’s voice, authoritative and distinct, reflects his vast knowledge of nature: birds, insects, animals, reptiles, plants, trees and fish, without overthinking. In Lyrical Years, his first book, he brings human dignity to things airborne, to things close to land and water, and to things close to home.

Gary Grossman’s knowledge of birds and other winged creatures manifests itself in wonder. In showing their relation to other entities of nature and to humankind, he celebrates life. The visual music in “Chimney Swifts in Athens, Georgia,” is one extended image. As the “sleek chimney swifts/ side home” the poem’s free verse form, and content vividly depict their flight. “Gusts of/ black confetti/ they flutter/ falling. The swifts’ horizontal flight pivots into a vertical fall “into the/ sleeping/ stacks/ of the red/ brick mill,/ that fed/ our town.” Grossman’s poems include hawks, cardinals, buzzards, and hummingbirds. It’s very clear he knows more than he shows and tells. Cicadas are more heard than seen, mostly from trees. “Cicadas, Brood X” depicts their beauty, close up. “I was sitting on a poplar branch…when you landed.” “Eyes glowing like/ rubies from Ceylon” and “Golden-veined wings like/ a Tiffany window/ from January 1908.” The poem concludes, “And your wings/ clicked “yes, to say/ yes…” as we coupled/ to make Brood XI.”

Grossman writes with a tender authenticity of trees, flowers, plants, fish, and creatures from the sea. “Figs July 26, 2021” evokes the sensuality of this “purple-dressed fruit.” By contrast, kudzu is described as “A get out of my/ way or I’ll bury/ you, plant.” His poems about avocados, redbud trees, beach trees, rhododendrons, and rainbow trout reveal the link between humans and nature. “Budbreak” gives an account of a boy’s death, followed by a memorial; and a depiction of resilience. “But the buds will/ break again next year,/ and the next, woods/ bursting green.” A professor emeritus, Grossman spent much of his life in the classroom. “Snake Handlers” is set among students, learning by doing.

Not mere touches, but minutes

of close contact. Learning

to support their slithering frames.

“Don’t grab, just let them flow”

across forearms and biceps, over

open hands and flushed warm skin.

Home, for this poet, is family, his wife and two (now grown) daughters. Some poems are memories of a young, just married couple, of painting (at his spouse’s urging) their kitchen yellow, of painting the outside of their house during the Covid pandemic, of going out, for the first time, to a movie, during the pandemic, and in “American Sycamore” of husband and wife walking a trail in “the Georgia woods in January.” “Thanksgiving Recipe Poem 2021” is a holiday memory that includes extended family and gives credence to the adage: expect the unexpected. One detail showing the poet’s bond with this immediate family appears in the first of two tattoo poems. “On Getting a Tattoo” ends with

Cobalt fading to pearl,

ringed by Barbara, Rachel,

and Anna.

A permanent reminder—life

flings us to and fro. But strong

arms are there to catch us.

One of the most emotive and affectionate, i.e., loving poems in the collection is “These Are My Gifts,” with its dedication: For the wedding of Rachel and Nauroze. “My gifts to you are freedom/ tolerance, and an open heart.”

Heart is what abides in these poems. Whether about jogging, or cleaning out an office at a university in preparation for retirement, or fishing, or loaning a young woman a campground’s thirty dollars fee, or, to his family’s delight and dismay, rearranging dishes in the dishwasher, the commodity of these poems is heart. It would be accurate to call Gary Grossman a nature poet, but it would be limiting. He is that, and more. What readers take away from ‘Lyrical Years’ is a love of life, a life fraught with pain as well as joy. They are poems of an individual with strong ties to family, humankind, and nature. Gary Grossman is saying things only he can say and saying them well.

Visual Music, a review of Lyrical Years, by Gary Grossman. Kelsay Books. American Fork, Utah. 2023. $23.00 paper

ISBN: 978-1-63980-263-0

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