Circle Tour by Eva Tihanyi

Circle Tour, Eva Tihanyi’s ninth poetry collection, seeks and celebrates beauty in the face of despondency. Its three sections—Outer Circle, Inner Circle, Centre—draw us in as we move from the “outside” world of politics, culture, and art to the “inside” world of relationships with family, friends, and lovers, to the “core” world of the self.

The book begins with a stark announcement of hope: “If you’re reading this, / you’re still here.” It then moves to engagement with (among other things) the pandemic, feminism, and artists such as Marina Abramovic while reinforcing the healing power of Nature throughout our experiences with external, beyond-our-control circumstances. In the more personal second section, Tihanyi writes about loss through death; the continuing influence of her grandmother; the end of one love moving into a new, more profound love; the importance of friends, reminding us that “each day we must be / lucid with mutiny against despair.” The final section focuses on the self—not just the poet’s own but the universal human Self. It confronts the process of aging and its attendant contemplations, and once again reminds us of how Nature and art can help us in our “continuous becoming.”

The poems in Circle Tour invite a sequential reading as the book gathers force as it spirals upward. It takes us on a powerful journey that ends with the ultimate affirmation that leads us full circle to our present moment: “Enough on this day / to be enormously alive.”

Circle Tour is EVA TIHANYI‘s ninth poetry collection. Most recently, The Largeness of Rescue (2016) garnered a Fred Cogswell Award for Excellence in Poetry. She has also published a volume of short stories, Truth and Other Fictions (2009). Tihanyi, who taught English at Niagara College from 1989 to 2020, now writes full time. She lives in the Port Dalhousie neighbourhood of St. Catharines, Ontario.