Suspended in Amber
Review of Caroline Bird, The Air Year
by Izzi Holmes
In The Air Year, the English poet and playwright Caroline Bird explores the liminal forms and implications of love as it runs its course. The title concept, “air year,” is defined in the poem “Temporary Vows,” as “the anniversary prior to paper / for which ephemeral gifts are traditional.” This definition undergirds the collection. Throughout, Bird articulates the joys and horrors of an existence that eludes convention. By presenting love as a form of suspension, a suspending agent, and a product of suspension, Bird literalizes its liminality. She takes the idea of an “air year” a step further by suspending her reader in the “ephemeral gift” of each poem, bringing this account of love as suspension into the realm of the real.
Bird begins her exploration of love as suspension in her opening poem, aptly titled “Mid-air.” In it she asserts the speaker’s proximity to the reader, and thus implicates the reader in the poem. At the start of this first poem, the speaker addresses the reader directly: “[t]here is a corner of the city where the air is / soft resin. Step in and it hardens / around you. Suspended / in amber.” This imagery encourages readers to imagine themselves in a poetic world. Phrases like “step in” as well as the word “you” supplement this invitation, beckoning the reader to enter and participate in the creation of this liminal space. The opening lines thus establish the relationship between the speaker and the reader, the theme of liminality, and the necessity of collaborative creation within the poem and the collection.
Also in “Mid-air,” Bird introduces the literal component of suspension in the work, and establishes the ways in which time and space operate differently in this imaginative realm. The prefix “mid” transforms into “midway,” “mid-leap,” “mid-air,” and “mid-spin,” and therefore becomes a refrain that disrupts the linear flow of time. Through this polyptoton, Bird traps her reader in an infinite present where conventions of temporality and physicality melt away and love starts to take its course. She also punctuates the work with the word “and.” It frames both sentences and lines throughout the poem, supporting a reading of “Mid-air” as a representation of the fluid boundaries of this “air year” in which time stops and love lives. The repetition reinforces similar images of literal suspensions – the space separating rooftops, the upbeat of a note, and the moment between two breaths – and subsequently affirms Bird’s extended metaphor of love as suspension.
Love is suspended between reality and disbelief in “Flicker,” a poem that articulates the transformative power of creation, but through the eyes of a Prufrockian speaker. In the lines, “Hello single / strand of hair across my forehead / like a subtle crack in the universe,” the speaker re-scales reality by magnifying minutiae. The re-scaling is hyperbolic, but readers have no choice but to go with it. The speaker lifts oppressive conventions to discover a liminal space of possibility: “I can kick things to life. / Kiss. Be kissed to life. Feel / my pulse, it’s back.” The enjambment emphasizes freedom. Logically, we cannot replicate these actions, but we do, stepping into the sphere of possibility that the creative act makes. Bird shows that in the imaginative space of the poem, a strand of hair can fracture the entire world, a kiss can revive, and, as she states in the concluding line, a goldfish can take on the responsibility of a flickering “wet flame.”
Towards the end of the collection, in “It Sneaks Up On You,” the sense of wonder that liminality brings begins to wane, as Bird documents the act of making art in relation to its final product. Direct addresses bookend this poem: the speaker tells the reader that, although “[y]ou determined the exact position of the stencil” at the beginning, at the end of this project “[y]ou … took a step back, jumped and screamed.” The reader is not exempt from this chaotic undoing. Despite an author’s best efforts to control the outcome of the work, its meaning is uncontrollable once the structure of the stencil falls away. The negative space is of equal weight to the positive space in the creation of meaning. Neither the artist nor the critic determines a work’s final significance. This poem celebrates the unpredictability of the creative process – and yet Bird’s exploration of love throughout The Air Year asks for a second reading of “It Sneaks Up On You,” for the poem is also a commentary on the collaboration in relationships. In liminal moments, between recognized and unrecognized promises of devotion, Bird observes that the beginning or end of a relationship can come without warning. By placing this poem near the end of the collection, Bird emphasizes the arc of love in the work, arguing that a liminal love that evades beginnings and endings must at some point turn to one or the other. Nothing can stay suspended forever. There is as much hope as pessimism in this observation, however, for it is not only the end but also the beginning of love that sneaks up on us.
The Air Year is a masterful juxtaposition of confession and wit that simultaneously traverses the metaphysical and the intimate to account for our liminal, luminous relationships. As each poem in the collection describes a moment between the breaths of first and final lines, every account of experience is as fleeting and eternal as the experience itself. Marrying form and content, Caroline Bird engages the reader in the liminal spaces that she creates. The Air Year encapsulates the suspension of its title on every page.
Works Cited
Bird, Caroline. The Air Year. Carcanet Press, 2020.
Izzi Holmes is a rising fourth-year student at McGill University double majoring in Honours English literature and psychology. She was born and raised in New York City.
10 June 2024