The Scent Of Spring, Elegies Out Of Season

The Scent of Spring gathers fifteen elegies of documentary witness that bear testimony to the crises of our age.�Karen Mulhallen's poems move across continents and situations: a child picking his way through the ruins of Mosul; an activist working to rescue pigs bound for slaughter; a biblical figure turning away from refugees drowning in the Mediterranean; a beggar woman in Toronto sharing an Asian pear; a Japanese fisherman meeting a spirit bear on Canada's west coast. Binding individual grief to collective tragedy, the collection is, in Alberto Manguel's words, an admirable, necessary memento mori for our anguished times.