Review by Rebecca Jane
Incidental Pollen delivers wisdom relating to the experiences of being a nurse, the patients’ courage, and the vistas of grief, spanning verdant mystery to papery decay. These poems bare witness to the degradation of natural resources while also paying homage to bees, trees, nectar, pollen, imagination, and longing. Ellen Austin-Li’s debut collection contains narrative poetry that awakens the heart. Incidental Pollen has received recognition from Trio Award, Wisconsin Poetry Series, and Arthur Smith Poetry Prize. As the cofounder of Poetry Night at Sitwell’s in Cincinnati, Austin-Li also shows up as a poet who has a compassionate, community-oriented consciousness.
Austin-Li demonstrates mastery of various poetic forms, especially the palindrome, the ekphrastic, and the pantoum. This poetic journey, which is both psychological and emotional, begins as “the stars start out on their cold slide through the dark. / And the sun kicks inside the moon’s dark womb.” (6) Moments of clarity comingle with moments of bewilderment. The poem “When the World was Holy” captures post-op vision:
each blade of grass breathed
on the lawn, new green pulses,
while the air was a violet lung
expanding and contracting—
every ray of the sun sang. (8)
This poem, like every poem in the collection, concludes with a satisfying line. Readers might be sighing with relief, itching with discomfort, or burning with curiosity; or, they may sense total identification with the speaker of the poem. The emotional depth resonates on the level of memory.
These poems are the voice of a woman who knows herself through years “I have no choice but to let go of what I cling to” (25). The sublime experience of standing in a rain of cherry blossoms opposes the numb sensation experienced while a father is passing away that is irradicated by the sting of losing a nephew. These poems behold the spectrum of human emotion with relatable tension, release, and inevitability. We are with a wise woman, walking together upon the Irish landscape. The emotionally mature sensibility collaborates with a sensitivity to shadow and light that mirrors the psyche and the heart.
Like the trees of the ancient Ogham, “everyone has an understory // we can never know” (48). Be alert to all that is hidden here. “Mountain Song (for my Nephew)” conjures horse’s hooves pounding the earth juxtaposed to the secret she is harboring, the way “bees now seem like our family” (56). These poems commemorate family connections that endure beyond the grave. The influence of Irish landscape and W.B. Yeats comes through in poems that praise windswept fields and moss and the verdant green of childhood enchantment. But the deep treasure is the occasional lifting of the veil between life and death that give brief glimpses of profound mystery. This collection will leave a mark on the reader’s psyche and bring us all closer to nurturing a wiser, more sensitive consciousness.
Incidental Pollen: Poems
by Ellen Austin-Li
Madville Publishing, May 20, 2025, 85 pages, $19.95, paper
ISBN: 978-1-963695-25-0
Rebecca Jane is the author of She Bleeds Sestinas, which was a finalist for a Best Book Award in 2023. She works as a freelance writer, ghostwriter, and poet who travels to Asia to study yoga, Sanskrit, and Mandarin. She lives with her daughters on unceded Kumeyaay land. (San Diego, California).