The ‘dying time’
Becoming the Harvest
by Pauline Le Bel
Qualicum Beach: Caitlin Press, 2025
$20 / 9781773861562
Reviewed by Jane Frankish
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The image of a seeding Drya Otopetali adorns the cover of west coast author Pauline Le Bel’s poetry collection, Becoming the Harvest. The common name for this herbaceous perennial is Mountain Avens. It is a hardy Arctic Alpine plant of the Rose family that is appreciated for its healing qualities and has come to symbolize resilience and longevity. The plant in the photograph is past the flowering stage and has lost its petals. Feathery wisps remain, giving the appearance of thinning white hair. Long plumes enable Mountain Avens seeds to catch the wind and, once a seed touches the ground, the renewal process begins.
Le Bel’s poetry addresses the process of aging and dying. Dying is presented as a physical connecting back to earth, much like the Mountain Avens seeds gently leaving the plant, and floating down to the ground to germinate. The first poem in this collection, “Becoming the Harvest” is about the passing of a doe and it evokes a soft return to the soil. Le Bel writes: “For her, dying was as natural as living. / As natural as laying down.”
Dying is a part of life, part of a regenerative cycle. A sad but normal event, part of a seamless flow. To ‘harvest’ is to gather ripened crops, and this implies ‘reaping,’ which in turn brings to mind the image of the grim reaper. In the poem, Angel of Death Le Bel invokes the reaper, so as to deny him, “What if dying is not a struggle / with the Grim Reaper armed with a scythe?”
The poet moves away from this morbid image of death to a more conciliatory one—an elegant angel in fine leather shoes, who politely asks for a dance:
Sometimes it’s a waltz
Sometimes a tango
Sometimes you lead
Sometimes you follow
Even the dreaded banshee, that shrieking harbinger of death, is presented in sympathetic terms, in La Bel’s poem of the same name.
She’s come by keep you company,
to sing you a lullaby and rock you gently
to your everlasting sleep.
Like the elegant angel in leather shoes, the banshee is here to teach us, to guide us, to lead us in that final dance.
Let her teach you how to walk the sky.
Let her teach you how to dance the sky.
Singingis another theme in this collection. In “Deathbed Song,” the poet, who is a professional singer, is asked to sing long-distance, on the telephone, to a friend’s father who is dying. She chooses a folk song in his native Hungarian language, “Boci, Boci Tarka,” about a spotted cow with no ears and tail.
The dying man smiles, and the reader is uplifted by the image of an old man passing away, transported and, perhaps, transfigured.
In “God’s Waiting Room,” we learn that the author has been living in a ‘seniors co-op’ for sixteen years and is aging with her peers,
Old people on the Board of Directors.
Old people on the Maintenance Committee.
Old people spying on neighbours through venetian blinds.
The warm-hearted camaraderie that comes through in this poem, conveys a sense of patience and ease while waiting for the end—“Keeping ourselves busy down here / on standby at heaven’s door.”
In “Ripe,” there is an association between aging and the image of fruit. Le Bel (Whale in the Door) presents the ideal of aging as a fruition in the fullness of time:
place the yellow mango
in the wooden fruit bowl. And wait.
I mean wait. Slice it before its time
and your mouth will miss all the show.
Le Bel draws the reader’s attention to the aging process and presents it as a positive period of life, a time to be ready, a time of maturity, a time to harvest. She observes of ‘ripeness,’
Now the mango will give you
Everything a mango was born to do.
Much the same with an old woman
By far the most moving piece in the collection is the prose piece, Zig-Zag Bridges, which is about the author’s sister, Suzanne, who was diagnosed with ALS. When Suzanne learned of her illness she had been wanting to take a trip to China. She had planned her itinerary and had eagerly immersed herself in Chinese culture by reading, listening to music, and eating Chinese food.
The reader learns of the impact of the diagnosis and the subsequent denial of its implications. Le Bel desperately wants the trip to go ahead; she believes that she can help: “I would be Suzanne’s guide dog.” The reality is that Suzanne is too ill, and the much-awaited trip to China is replaced by trips to the hospital.
Unable to travel, Le Bel and her sister decide to bring China to her small Ottawa apartment. A friend gives them a book of Chinese art, another, an art specialist, discusses the paintings in the book with Suzanne. The sisters attend a slide presentation about traditional Chinese gardens at the National Gallery. They learn that the halls and pavilions of the Chinese gardens have specific names like, “The Hall of Gazing at Pines.” Later, the sisters would decide to rename the rooms in Suzanne’s apartment with similar titles.
As the slide show progresses, it becomes apparent that the traditional Chinese garden is designed so that it could not be seen all at once. There were intimate twisting paths and zig-zag bridges. Walking in these gardens, “You were forced to move from one perspective to another.”
Over the next 18 months, Suzanne moves into what Le Bel calls the “dying time.” As Suzanne’s condition deteriorates, her ability to swallow diminishes. The reader empathizes with Suzanne’s loss of her favourite foods (“Balderson Extra Old Cheddar on thin rye crackers”) and feels sad when the only item left on the menu is “frozen orange juice cubes.”
In the end, Le Bel hears that her sister has ten days left to live, “I was hoping she would have a different idea about her situation. A more hopeful outlook.” Hope rises against reality, and somehow this emotion opens the door to acceptance. It seems that the impossible expectation for an alternative outcome becomes a strength that helps the poet face reality. Later, Le Bel sets this moment of her sister’s passing in the metaphorical Chinese garden they had imagined together: “I could no longer see her on the zig-zag bridge. She had made it to the other side.”
Le Bel artfully transfers the reader’s attention from the violence of a sudden terminal diagnosis, to an impossible hopefulness, and on to the graceful acceptance of an unexpected end to life’s journey.
One poem, “A Handful of Soil,” collapses the difference between life and death in the poet’s celebration of the earth. This small poem of just two stanzas contains a sensuous and immediate image of renewal and resurrection—
I scoop up a handful of soil from my garden
and inhale the sweet smell of death:
The poetry in this collection brings to aging and dying, the grace and dignity we normally associate with living and growing. In “If I Should Write an Anthem for Old Age,” Le Bel explains that her personal anthem
… would be short
like the measure of our lives
humble like our frail human presence.
Becoming the Harvest achieves this ideal.
[Editor’s note: Click on the following links to access videos of Pauline Le Bel reading her poems “The Angel of Death,” “Becoming the Harvest,” and “Pollen.”
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Jane Frankish lives in Vancouver and works at Vancouver Public Library. She writes poetry and prose and has published in SAPP zine, Emerge 24 anthology, and the Graduate Liberal Studies Journal. She has a Creative Writing Certificate from the Writer’s Studio (SFU), Master’s Degree in Liberal Studies (SFU), and Masters in Library and Information Studies (UBC). [Editor’s note: Jane Frankish has reviewed books by Meghan Kemp-Gee, Bruno Cocorocchio, Eileen Casey & Jeanne Cannizzo, and Jenny Boychuk for BCR. She has also published personal essays—”Chennai: A Place in Between” and “Letters from the Pandemic 16: Dear Percy”—in BCR.]
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The British Columbia Review
Interim Editors, 2023-26: Trevor Marc Hughes (non-fiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction and poetry)
Publisher: Richard Mackie
Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an online book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.
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