QUOTIDIAN by Caroline Holme

Caroline Holme is a poet’s poet. Not only is she well-read in the canon, she is well-versed in reinterpreting the great themes of alienation, betrayal, the seasons, and the family drama. From the first poem in the collection, “Shut-in,” Holme voices her mission, “I’m finding my way back to a place/where I never felt at home, as if I could repair the damage done.” Although the speaker in “Message in a Bottle” “sees the end in everything” and “forgets how to hope,” she is also “still indefatigable in love.” Holme’s work is a marriage of the hyperbole of the metaphysical and the passionate interiority of the confessional. In the stunning “Purple Tulips,” a clear homage to Plath, Holme sets her razor vision on the bulb that has captivated writers and artists for centuries. “Tulips never really open except to die.” By the time we read these lines, we know that she is talking about more than the famed flower. That is the power of Holme’s best work; when most successful, her poems can be read literally and metaphorically. The poems in “Quotidian” are anything but commonplace. I look forward to reading what she writes next.