Here at the Crux
Leanne Boschman
Silver Bow Publishing, 2022
Review by Cynthia Sharp
Leanne Boschman is an exemplary poet, human, and Earth citizen—a sister to the past, present, and future; to readers, memory, and verse. Here at the Crux is as melodically crafted as her 2009 debut from Leaf Press Precipitous Signs: A Rain Journal, inviting readers back into her depth. From cover to cover, through three eloquent sections titled “The Human Scent,” “Unsparing Season,” and the paradoxical message “Sing Only of Return,” Boschman gives voice to wrenching philosophical issues in luring lyricism. Gathering petals into bouquets of gently cascading imagery, she reassures readers they are not alone in pondering the mysticism of sorrow and grace.
The book opens with a quote from Sharon Olds: “The poem is a vale of soul-making.” “Soul-making” is indeed what Boschman does; incorporating multiple elements of fragmented ancestry and home, Boschman offers benediction at the crux—from unveiling the post traumatic stress disorder of war-ravaged relatives immigrating from the Ukraine to the Canadian prairies, to mourning her mother’s suffering and death from cancer. All the while, resilience and compassion attest to the power of presence and trusting one’s own strength.
With a motif of spiritual diction and a Romantic sense of the divinity in nature, Here at the Crux carves unique rhythms that both call back to the past and propel us forward. Part One references Jane Hirshfield’s epiphany on life, “To sit there a while in the petals, altering nothing,” a wisdom Boschman evokes throughout the collection as she embraces her place in time without inflicting judgement on the journeys of others. Boschman lays to rest intergenerational violence and nurtures the soil for lives to come after her own.
Her opening poem, “Tuesday’s Child,” sets a devotional tone with lines like: “I listen…for…birds flying back, navigating by stars, / by waves, by the magnetic field of earth…green rosaries of cottonwood seeds…the budding benediction of that day.” The sense of the sacred in bucolic settings continues with the musicality of poems such as “spruce lullaby”: “swinging through my days…i look at you to know my cradle will be rocked. / through swindling gusts & crush…swishswung safely…the lull-a-bye shush / of your darkgreen song.” Boschman sings the earth to life with assonance and alliteration, exemplifying the melodies of foliage, cradled in its arms.
Even stones of tragedy are carried with a calming cadence. In “Hymns for Sad Ballads,” Boschman seeks to understand her immigrant grandmother’s mourning, her grief for broken promises and the community she never returned to. The poet captures her Grandma Neufeld’s disdain for violent Saturday morning cartoons—“Explosions and gunshots aren’t funny. / They’re what kill your neighbors”—and reflects on the violence witnessed by those close to her. “The way she described him lying there, / a ragdoll with shreds of stuffing / spilling out onto grass,” the poet recalls. These poems explore how war shatters minds and obliterates continuity, examining grief as an heirloom passed on.
Boschman continues to contemplate memory and meaning through “Unsparing Season,” peeling back the decades. In the title poem, “Here at the Crux,” she reflects on being an English lit student in Professor H.’s class, while he weeps at The Grapes of Wrath and the apathy around him. His midlife grief combines with her own, weaving through the difficult lives of generations of immigrants on the Canadian prairies, revering her mother’s canning work and the details that go into growing, harvesting, and preparing food. In the same breath, “Springtime Diary, 2022” speaks from our moment in time: “small green flags unfurled, their only anthem— / breathe, breathe. / Breath is sacred… / Wielding only plowshares and pruning hooks / we long to make scorched ground flourish.” The rhythm of contrast between “earth’s ceaseless, diurnal cycle” and “a storm [that] unleashes sleet, shivers crocuses with snow” celebrates growth while recounting the disheartening struggle against destruction, hardy ecosystems enduring fierce damage. Boschman conveys the patient strength required of those “ready to restore this earth.”
With eyes wide open, poems like “Lowland” implore readers to see and address the crux we’ve reached in environmental catastrophe:
…swamped cities, severed roadways,
valleys turned to lakes.
Lives engulfed by flood waters,
travellers missing.
A lowland of grief.
Roots that could have held back the water
rotting in clear-cuts,
or burned away in wildfires…
in this unsparing season we’ve created.
Boschman’s eloquent revelations link the causes and effects of intensified climate change storms, calling on our resilience and service to one another to understand the complexity of environmental damage and to tackle the restoration required.
The final section “Sing Only of Return” spans seeds and growth, resurrection and wonder, as the poet comes through the pandemic. Studying how ravens and crows stretch across the dichotomous landscape of light and dark in “Prescription,” the narrator drinks in their elixir like the rhythm of waves thundering across the hard shores of home:
…they prescribed the cure—
chants accompanied by clinking of chimes
made of sea glass, rusty nails, and water
sloshed in discarded calabashes.
Prayers to be intoned while thumbing
a rosary of agates, marmot bones, and emeralds.
Now I savour each sip of cottonwood
sap that reaches me from the river’s bed, each wave
of sunlight that crashes through the window
knocking everything to the floor…
The book closes with the subdued “Morning Fog,” a sensory vision from the mists of Shawnigan Lake. Short lines and stanzas allow white space to permeate the poem the way fog shrouds the outer world, inviting readers to meditate. “Part of me is fog— / call it breath, patience, threshold /…hear how particles of prayers hover,” the poet whispers, consecrating the present and future with permission to unfurl and be.
Here at the Crux is a rich and worthwhile read, an agape meal of wholeness. Healing and magical, Boschman brings a parched humanity to song. Let her verse restore your faith in yourself, in nature, in hope.
Cynthia Sharp holds an MFA in creative writing and an Honours BA in literature. She’s a full member of the League of Canadian Poets and was the Writers International Network (WIN) Vancouver 2022 Poet Laureate. Her poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction can be found in many literary journals including CV2, untethered, Quills and The Pitkin Review.