By Katherine Matiko
Circle Tour
by Eva Tihanyi
Inanna Publications and Education Inc. (2023)
Eva Tihanyi’s Circle Tour takes readers on a spiralling journey from hope to societal and personal disharmony and back to hope again.
Her tautly-written poetry brims with memorable imagery. I discovered poems within her poems; stanzas such as Eschatology’s On the pages of now: the past / indelibly present, a haunting watermark could stand alone and bear cherishing.
The book is divided into three sections: Outer Circle, Inner Circle, and Centre. In Outer Circle, Tihanyi’s examination of our defective world can be stark. From politics: It’s an earnest business / manufacturing truth, the grand edifice / of power (Encounter) to ecological angst: Do you know the oceans are drowning in themselves / the sun is eating itself alive? (Do You Know), the poet leads us down an ostensibly futile road. In these poems, even literature is hollow: How will your privileged poems / save the children? (There are Those Who Say).
But then, a reprieve: Like the code of flowers / embedded in seeds / we carry our hope within us / essential force (Spring Meditation). I loved these lines from Experienced Music: The day breaks already broken / yet still we hope. And these, from pandemic-inspired 2020 Vision: Tell the remarkable world how much / despite itself, you love it.
In the second section, Inner Circle, Tihanyi explores the interpersonal with insight and compassion. She shares glimpses of her relationships with close friends, siblings, parents—and her grown child in the exquisite Conversations with My Son.
I was moved by her poems about lost and newfound love. In Indifference, an ode to past loves, she writes, Oh, how I coopered my heart / for each of you, believing you / to be the last one. / Imagine my surprise / when I realize how easy it is / to forget you.
In the love poem What is True, Tihanyi writes: Now, in this oddly together summer / we couple ourselves / to hope, its heart-healing sweetness / and allow ourselves to believe / in what is true. And in Acknowledgement, this beautiful stanza: When your love washes over me / I never think of drowning.
In the final section, Centre, Tihanyi reveals a rich inner world, the sphere of the writer. She writes about ageing (It Is Only), death (Incantation), the power of self-acceptance and self-knowledge (Body and She), and joy (Praise Song).
To our benefit, Tihanyi has embraced the poet’s life; she demonstrates it masterfully in Circle Tour, her ninth poetry collection. In her youth, She will not be cajoled out of poetry (Portrait of the Poet as a Young Girl). She describes her purpose as a writer in Incidental Contemplations:
To pry open the gates of meaning
and let the wild words run
exultant as horses.
Keep this quietly powerful volume close to hand in order to mine its darkness and then Seize the multi-hearted love / the mutinous song (Defiance 1).
Katherine Matiko is a poet living in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, where she finds daily inspiration for poetry. Her poems have appeared in (M)othering: an anthology (Inanna Publications); Wild Roof Journal, Issue 17; the League of Canadian Poets’ Poetry Pause; and WordCity Literary Journal, Spring 2023.