Mast Year
Review
What a rich "mast year" Katherine Hagopian Berry had while writing the poems in MAST YEAR. These poems empty out the contents of her heart and spirit, drawn from the ground up and out into "all light rising" When she says, "It is true, I know this", I believe her. Thís is poetry where we look into the hearts of others, find whole worlds there, learn and move on, changed, ínto a somehow newer world. I learn something about being human from every one of these poems. "In the end, this is history." Yes, in the end, this is light, and we bask in the light of her grace and inteligence, thankful for these poems.
Review
The poems in Katherine Hagopian Berry's Mast Year present many scenarios. An Abenaki legend, the immigration story of a great-great grandmother, the description of an old schoolhouse-these snapshots of a vivid life take the reader through a year full of ferment and abundance. Poems plumb the richness of both soil and relationships, celebrate the joy of growth and plenty, while also acknowledging (and even welcoming) the incvitabiliry of dissolution and decay.
The speaker presents "monuments of birth or dying with equal reverence; she delights in her observations, extolling the abundance of a mast year when oak trees produce "acorn explosion, cverywhere fruiting" Even the speaker's descripive observations extol the duality of life and death, as when she describes her mother's silk scarf "the color of bone and new mown grass/blood and autumn sky." It is a wise, finely attuned observer who speaks these poems, enticing the reader to enter her compassionate, clear-eyed vision of the natural world of which she (and all of us) are a part.