Tend, Kate Hargreaves
Book*hug Press,
2022
Tend makes you think, right away, of what you need to tend to in your daily life. What are the things that make you stop and mind them, the ones that you take note of in your head, your heart, or in writing (if you’re a writer)? The poems in this collection are populated by tiny pieces of mosaic-like imagery that often echo through the book. What pieces of our lives are broken, and how do we manage to cobble them together into something with a holistic structure so that there is a centre of some sort to hold onto when things dissolve?
These are personal poems but might also be very reflective of the pandemic years, as well. How do we manage, when we are ripped out of the fabric of society, to isolate? Also, how do we heal if we are broken, either physically or mentally? Time, Hargreaves suggests in Tend, is a healer most of us can’t even fully comprehend the force of as we move through challenging periods in human history. That awareness will come after the broken things have healed, she suggests.
In the first poem, “the young ones,” Hargreaves writes “we are the young ones/and we have come for your sons/our pants stretch tight over thighs and button high/we mix patterns and clash colours.” The young ones “burn popcorn for dinner” and “cut hair with nail scissors.” The frame of the poem is circular, with an echo that reads: “we have come for your sons/to wash away their potential/we cannot garden/we do not try/but oh, how we laugh.” What interests one generation will likely not fascinate the next, but each one has its own sense of spontaneity and specificity.
Hargreaves is extremely fluid and capable in her ability to move from one curiosity—with a keen sense of close, detailed observation—to another. In one poem, she writes about the pain of having an IUD being implanted as part of “an early gift for February 14.” The T shape “floats in a world of pink and pinker/and fluid red.” It is the “Autoreply to a dick pic” and then becomes “A rogue letter [that] bumps against bladder walls.” The tiny device looks deceptively simple in brochure ads for the product, but then “dug its way through my uterus last Monday,/wiggled through walls and poked out the other side,/an earring pushed through a years-sealed hole.” Not simple, and often a painful procedure.
In several poems, there are references to scars, swollen ankles, cracking bones, scabs beginning to weep, along with allusions to the fragility of the physical human body. The human parts of our bodies that can be injured, that wear down, misbehave, cause us to age and someday fail, are the ones that are addressed, and then mirrored by fragments of other images, including ones of “a bitten lip/rough, damp, and threatening to split,” chrysanthemums that need to be deadheaded, words that are stripped “like veins from a leg/or bones from a fish,” and even a “hospice for dolls with split faces.” The theme of things breaking, or splitting, runs through the book. This can be seen in poems like “stains,” “a reproduction,” and “origin stories for a scar.” In “unsolicited,” for instance, the poet writes: “I don’t know who finds themselves splitting, but//I don’t know whose edges are fraying, but/--a cobbler can patch up those seams.”
The mosaic fragments of brokenness, though, find their own new hopeful roots as the imagery includes aspects of growth and renewal as Hargreaves writes: “Some people only take root near water/tugged toward walkable riversides.” Soon enough, “elderflower wine takes root.” In “bolt,” lettuce does just that, rushing “to seed and tipped in the storm.” In this poem, there is the lesson that “Some things just need time.” Patience is something we humans often don’t have, but these poems speak of how we must come to a sense of balance—to know of endings and then to somehow see beginnings there, as well.
Places of origin and the passage of time are defined in “what remains,” with the photographic memories that speak from childhood—marked by the ages of seven and nine—and by the turns of seasons: “August, perhaps June—my face was red, burnt/mid-afternoon by the looks of the shadows.” Time is of the essence, but also cannot be rushed. Memory is either gilded or dampened, and then the mind plays with what it recollects as we age, breaking and healing repeatedly.
In Tend, Kate Hargreaves has written poems that remind us to care for the broken parts of ourselves and of our society. Her work is rooted in the physicality of the body, but also in the specificity of the place where she lives, in Windsor. Tend showcases Hargreaves’ keen observation of the world around her as she collects images—the minutiae of everyday living—in a poetic inventory that speaks of the passage of time, mortality, isolation, and our own fragility.
Kim Fahner lives and writes in Sudbury, Ontario. Her latest book of poems is Emptying the Ocean (Frontenac House, 2022). She is the Ontario Representative for The Writers' Union of Canada (2020-24), a member of the League of Canadian Poets, and a supporting member of the Playwrights Guild of Canada. Kim's first novel, The Donoghue Girl, will be published by Latitude 46 Publishing in Spring 2024. She may be reached via her author website at www.kimfahner.com