Tag Archives: garden

Learning & yearning

photo from ebay, asking $199.00…

During bouts of outdoor work, when I’m mindlessly weeding, pruning, or doing soil prep, I’ve been mulling over whether–and if so, how–I’ve changed as to writing poetry (see closing paragraph of last week’s post). There are vague recollections of getting really on a roll and drafting new work into late hours of the night when I was 20 or 21 years old. But how I went about it, what approach I took to writing back then? I barely recall. It’d require research into my old journals to figure that out; there, I dare not go! And what happened to all the poems I typed up on my heavy, electric typewriter (an early 1970s Adler, if I recall aright)? They’ve mostly vanished, though a few reside in my attic in several boxes of old literary magazines which chose to publish my efforts.

Though I can’t clearly remember the “how,” I can say my topics and perhaps instincts and inspirations have definitely changed as the decades accrue. I wrote fewer poems during the years I was raising very young children, for obvious reasons, and my main topic at the time was mothering. The poems tended to be short. Mothering did affect my approach to poetry: brevity and swift sketches of imagery were all I had time for. It was necessary to be more concise compared to my earlier narrative lyricism fused with imagism and surrealism. As the children got older, I started reading a bit more widely into less-contemporary poetry and attempted a few formal approaches, such as sonnets, blank verse quatrains, and haiku. I wasn’t terribly good at it and needed some instruction, so I started attending short workshops when I could arrange childcare. The West Chester Poetry programs were helpful to me in the mid-90s and piqued my interest in going back to college for my MFA.

My advisors at Goddard observed that no matter my topic or method, environmental/natural images populated my work. I’d known this was the case but wasn’t aware of how prevalent the garden, fields, animals, and woods were…basically, always present. Even in some pieces I wrote when I was 19 and living in a city, there are sparrows and pigeons, dogwoods blossoming, spring rain. Some things don’t change.

~

Other aspects of the writing life morph, however, as circumstances alter and we get older and more experienced in dealing with said circumstances. Mothering continues even though the children have grown up–I still love and miss my kids, think of them often, and worry now and then, not that they need anyone to worry about them. I’m much smarter about how to grow things in the garden as well as more knowledgeable about the flora, fauna, and weather in my region. I’ve read reams of poems by excellent writers, studied what they do and how they do it, and felt excited by new work. I don’t miss being young, though I miss the stronger physical self I once took for granted. These experiences change the topics and the emotive aspects of what I write, I suppose.

It’s hard to explain what that means, though, so here’s an example. I’ve just finished reading poems by the 16th c. Korean poet Hŏ Nansŏrhŏn, a brilliant person who started writing before age 8 and died at 27. A young person all her life, by our standards, and a prodigy. A frequent theme of hers is yearning for a husband or lover who is far away, a trope as common in Asian poetry as in European poetry. The lover has gone to war, or been exiled, or is in another region on work for the king/emperor/church, or is at sea. Nansŏrhŏn frequently wrote in the style of the Chinese poets who penned this sort of yearning poem; in fact, her husband was often distant, trying to work his way into a higher-status position, while she was left at his home with her in-laws. Her desire may not even have been so much sexual longing as just plain loneliness. Her work, even when it is not more romantic in subject, is suffused with an overall sorrowful yearning.

I recall having that feeling when I was in my teens and early twenties. Often, I wasn’t even sure what it was I yearned for or desired specifically. I just felt the sense that something was missing in my life, and I suspect that many of my earliest poems aimed to describe vague heartbreak about a kind of emptiness. (I assure you, my work was terrible–no comparison to Nansŏrhŏn can be made here.) However, when I read her poems, that’s what resonates with me.

Later, when I actually loved a person who lived further from me that either of us liked, I’d listen to Mary Black, who was then with Planxty, as she sang the plaintive and beautiful tune “I Live Not Where I Love.” The ballad seemed accurate. Ah, young love.

The point of all this (and no, I haven’t been concise, sorry), is that while I recognize and appreciate the sentiment that accompanies yearning, my work has not been animated or inspired by that particular kind of longing for awhile now. It’s not that I lack desires, but the tenor of the feeling is different. Romantic love or an unrealized self? Not so much. The longing is for new places, further questions, better solutions, comfortable nearness, safe space, peace. I find much to learn every day, much to love, to admire. In spite of everything.

[[]] ~ [[]] Here’s a poem of mine that appeared 44 years ago in Painted Bride Quarterly #20. (Autumn 1983). I can see some structural things I would revise if I were writing this now. But let it stand as is:

House with a Red Roof

The house with the red roof makes a beacon
in the hills. We watch it constantly; it 
tricks our eyes.

The storm is bold behind it, an unsettled
feud of red and blue; heaven has its slate-
colored roof, its Chinese fire. It mounts 
hills, and before it, the house stands out,
a ruby in a charm.

The roof gems back summer sun, red hot, ablaze
and searing white siding: when we look away,
a yellow house with purple about it blurs our vision.

Autumn, red roof flanked by trees which hold
their color against it, slanting westward,
northward, ever lower.

A shadow bends the hill. The red roof hangs
on winter sky, the only bright for miles.
~
Photo by Nikita Parev on Pexels.com

Guascas

I don’t usually write about food, other than what I’ve been growing in my garden, although on my trip to eastern Turkey I tasted some dishes totally new to me (such as hangel, yogurt soup, and dondurma, all of which were delicious). And this past weekend, in New York City, I had a Colombian stew called ajiaco that requires an ingredient that grows in my garden. An herb that I have long considered a weed. Guascas.

While searching the internet for ajiaco recipes I learned that ajiaco calls for guascas, which apparently can be found in dried form in grocery stores that carry items common in South and Central American cuisine. It’s also used in Mexico’s sopa de guías and in some West African dishes. When I looked up guasca, I discovered that it is galinsoga parviflora–naturalized here in North America and found in my garden by the zillions. I pull these plants up constantly from April until October; there are still a few in leaf and bloom out there, despite three recent frosts.

Well then! I harvested some galinsoga and some cilantro that’s also been hanging in there through early November, and bought three varieties of potatoes at the farmer’s market (yellow, red, and white) and a garlic bulb and local onions, and got some of this summer’s sweet corn out of my freezer, and tried making ajiaco.

The act of preparing and cooking food can be nourishing in itself, when I am in the right mood. On a cool and overcast day, trees getting leafless, wind picking up…it was a good day to try a new recipe. The stew turned out well, though I will try a few more variations to tweak the flavor in future. But the thing that struck me as I was looking up various online recipes is that the food writers kept saying “guascas is difficult to find in markets and buying online may be best.”

Hm. How about checking your gardens? Chances are fairly good you’ll find quickweed or gallant soldier growing among the vegetables; it’s considered a “common weed” in U.S. gardens. Next year while I’m yanking the galinsoga out, I will set a little aside for cooking.

https://plantsam.com/galinsoga-parviflora/

Writing act

Lately, I’ve been experimenting again with prose poems and with very short poems that are not quite tanka or haiku, but not much longer. Six to ten lines. Short lines. Then, the online journal Six Sentences got me intrigued about experimenting with that idea as a prompt–long sentences, short sentences, a mix of both–but only six sentences. I like playing around with words. I enjoy writing almost as much as I enjoy reading, and it’s fun to enjoy what I am doing these days, when so much else seems unenjoyable, sad, fraught, scary (another mass shooting, of children, today).

The garden offers comforts, too. Now we are in the harvest-and-rip-up phase as August nears its close. Lots of tomatoes, still a few green beans, plenty of butternut squash and sweet peppers and basil. It looks as though I will harvest a lot of hot peppers, too; although I only have one plant, it is robust and full of spicy peppers that will get hotter as they ripen. And the summer flowers, those glorious annuals, are lovely this year. We even have more butterflies than usual!

So many people have written about gardens, I sometimes find myself wondering what value there is in it, what could be political or artistic in a garden poem, what could make such a poem dangerous or antisocial. Why it is deemed necessary to yank NEA grants from poets, for example. What is it about the act of writing that makes us outliers? Can it be because any description or observation takes a perspective, possibly personal, possibly outside the norm, potentially widening another person’s viewpoint? And is that dangerous? (Perhaps.) Because a plant or animal or place name might evoke an event or person or symbolize something that might rock the boat–a sunflower for Ukraine, a bald eagle for the USA? Could that be risky? And might the interpretation be incorrect, but the writer assumed guilty of…whatever? (There is nothing new in any of this.)

Here’s a draft of a prose poem that came of my reflecting on such questions.

~~

The Act of Writing

only occurs when pen in hand meets paper, or the act is mere mechanics, pressing typewriter keys and imprinting page, or is virtual, encoded onto disk, on cloud encrypted, ephemeral, the act one of persona, a mood or dream, some moment observed, imagined, a recollection, a heart-stab, a shattered vase, anchors dragged along ocean floor, a plea, promise, letters never sent, a life of pain, a sworn compassion, or love that cannot otherwise be expressed, an argument for understanding. The act of writing rallies, rages, sets forth accusation or denial, sues for mercy, brays at nothing, pointlessly puts forth what’s known but long ignored, unacknowledged, unaccepted, an act political by proxy, being the kind of behavior those in power seek to suppress, who make the act of writing into reams of tedious fine print outlawing every fervent danger that clings to the very act of writing which is the practice of free and conflicted expression even when the reader sees only a description of deep scarlet bougainvillea arching over a poet’s unmarked grave in a landscape of olives and oleander.

~

Plan B (reading)

While I was traveling the high-altitude desert regions, my home valley got its much-needed rain. And the rain continues. And continues. My plan was to get to work on my gardens as soon as I came back, to weed and plant out seedlings. Well, it’s a bit too wet for that. Also chilly and humid and sea-level, and therefore my physical adjustment has been a bit …bumpy. So, Plan B.

The Plan B default for me usually entails spending “down time” reading, writing, or housekeeping, though visiting the library and meeting friends for coffee fall under Plan B, too. Today, since I feel lousy and have a spate of brain fog, reading has been the choice. I still have a few books on the bedside pile that I haven’t gotten to–mostly poetry collections I bought at AWP at the end of March. But also there is Ocean Vuong‘s heartbreaking and beautiful novel-that-reads-like-memoir, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, that I finally got around to reading, and a back issue of Rattle Poetry a friend gave me–one that was largely devoted to haiku and related forms–that featured a fascinating interview with Richard Gilbert (thank you, Lesley S!). On the poetry-only book list, I read January Gill O’Neil’s Glitter Road, Julie Kane’s Naked Ladies, and Ross Gay’s first collection, Against Which. All quite useful to me in times when I feel bleak and physically frail–there’s humor, sorrow, and bravery in all of these writers’ poems. Though I’m too foggy-headed to write mini-reviews at the moment, I encourage my readers to check these poets out.

Perhaps my next post will be about the lovely time my friend and I had in northern New Mexico, visiting my daughter and Santa Fe, including my opportunity to see Bandelier National Monument again and ponder its environments and history. A trip like that takes some time for me to “digest.” But it was wondrous. And so is a day at home to recuperate in my favorite way: reading.

Verdancy

This report was posted almost a week ago, and the rainless weeks continue; today, fires are climbing their way along Pennsylvania’s forests beside the Delaware River, which looks almost as low as the Rio Grande in Albuquerque when I was there last month. Okay, I exaggerate a bit–but my alarm’s genuine. “No measurable precipitation” here, whereas Valencia, Spain gets a year’s rain in one day and western North Carolina receives 30 inches in two days. This stuff worries me even more than the upcoming election.

I’m not an alarmist, I’m a gardener. When do people start to admit to, and take action about, climate change? (Sorry, rhetorical question.)

~

One theme of the writing workshop I took with Anita Skeen and Cindy Hunter Morgan, as I blogged about here, was color–color as prompt, color as image, color in ekphrastic work, color as inspiration. One prompt was to write about a color you can imagine hating, or a color that you love. It was autumn, and I was in the desert; so I decided to be difficult and write about loving green. Not typically considered an autumn or desert tone, though in fact the high deserts have more green, and in more shades thereof, than most people expect.

Here’s my draft. I used to hate showing unfinished work around, but now I don’t mind doing it. I find the practice of posting/sharing early drafts instructive (and it keeps me mighty humble).

~

Love Is Verdant

Listen, if I were to fall in love again,
it would be with a color: green.
So many variations and hues
ever-changing, surprising me with wilderness,
forest and pine, sage, olive, and moss,
the craziness of chartreuse, 
glossy feathers of the teal.
Green as rushes in swamplands, bamboo
on mountains, diverse as rainforests
and summer tundra lichen, yellow-green
of maple leaves early in autumn,
the pitchy green of piñons high up the mesas.
Sure, there have been times I sought for
love that is constant, but now I know better,
for the only constant is change—and green
can accomplish that with as little as breeze
and sunlight, which are likewise things I love.

~

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Drought, again

The temperatures here in this eastern Pennsylvania valley have been mild, even warm, which isn’t that unusual for October, anymore. What’s different is the lack of rain. Northern New Mexico had more rain the past three weeks than our region did. Now that is unusual, and a bit worrisome. Our local trees have been enduring numerous stresses in recent years: irregular rainfall, invasive insects, road construction and housing developments, run-off, and viruses. Droughty autumns and winters do not make for resilient, happy trees and other perennials, unless they are desert varieties.

I love the desert, but the Lehigh Valley (where I live) is not primed to be a desert. We need the temperate moisture of rivers flowing down to sea level and 50″ of rain each year. It would be interesting to learn xeriscaping and how to garden in low-moisture regions, but only if I were living in one. I’ve been concerned for a long time about the climate changes I see occurring around me, noted the differences year by year in my gardening journal, tried to limit my own water use even in this temperate, damp-ish area. But. On my own, I cannot conserve enough water to keep the 70-foot-tall tulip trees and large oaks and colorful maples healthy. Nor the soil and its microorganisms, fungi, understory plants, and useful arthropods.

True, sometimes the long days of rain and overcast skies we get in autumn, winter, and spring feel oppressive; and they make my joint pains flare. But I count for little, whereas the earth counts for a lot. I’d gladly trade some low-barometer aches for a vibrant, healthy local climate.

~

The frosts, though light and few, are arriving now. Maybe we will get rain by Election Day? I have too many hopes for next week. Best not to speculate; I can wait.

In the meantime, I have just finished reading Cindy Hunter Morgan’s very beautiful new collection, Far Company, and I recommend it, especially if you like poetry with an environmental resonance and poems of memoir and recalled experience. Purchase it from Wayne State, not Amazon, if you can. To frustrate a certain billionaire, not that he will notice.

We do the small things, right?

Sweltering

I do not much care for air conditioning, and I believe it is bad for the environment; yet I admit I’m grateful for it lately, as I reside in one of the many regions of the USA that’s been enduring dangerously high temperatures for more than a week straight. I feel lucky that we’re not struggling with the heat wave–that we can shut up the windows and turn on the AC. We’re also in an earlier-than-usual drought situation though the air feels muggy and humidity has been as high as 98%.

My garden needs water every day; I generally water in the evenings because that is when the garden is in shade. The barn swallows swoop around me as I make sure the tomato and cucumber plants’ roots are getting a deep soaking. While I water, I watch for insects–fireflies, moths, dragonflies. And for bats, which have returned but aren’t as numerous as they once were. It’s pleasant for me that there are fewer mosquitoes and gnats, but I’m concerned about a drop in the number of junebugs and moths, and even (yes) mosquitoes. The heat and drought have taken a toll on all kinds of wildlife.

This morning, a pair of finches dive-bombed a squirrel that was up in the pear tree, chasing it far into the hedgerow. It may have been after the unripe pears, but squirrels also sometimes eat songbird eggs or chicks, especially when the squirrels are nursing kits or when there’s a lack of other food. The deer are so thirsty and desperate for greens that they’ve eaten every last hosta in my landscape, including the ones right up at the house foundation. They are consuming plants they have overlooked before, but I can’t blame them. Since it has been so miserable outside, I haven’t picked black raspberries this year; I’m sure the deer are happy about that. But I do wish they’d eat the poison ivy, wintercreeper, oriental bittersweet, and honeysuckle vines…that would make my landscaping tasks easier!

I’ve kept a garden journal for 30 years. If you have a garden, you don’t need to be an environmental scientist to recognize that the climate is undergoing changes. This is not a political statement but a fact. Everything right now is stressed–including the gardener! The stress enters into my consciousness and, I suppose, into my creative life. My poem drafts of the past week have been a bit on the bleak side.

Here’s a draft of one of the 7-line poems I was working on last week. Suits the weather, I guess.

~


Sweltering

A description accurate for the days past solstice
when even the wind lies sweating in a hammock
unable to rise for a brief turn around the block.
Blackbirds slow their trills, robins shelter in shade,
all the tasks we should tend to we leave undone.
Hours of lethargy seep into skin and set up house,
keeping us damp, achy, sunburned with the blues.

~


Equinoctal

Torrents. We had rain in torrents, and it went on for days from February into March and then on…and on. Constant alerts on the cell phones: “Flash flooding.” Doldrums set in. In an effort to accomplish anything at all, I even started to sort through and organize my attic.

Talk about desperation!

The attic project isn’t finished–the weather turned mild and clear two days ago, so I ran to the garden to get to work out there–but it turned out to be a more rewarding task than I expected. I started by tackling the Christmas stuff, then the books (SO many books), children’s toys (the kids are in their 30s and there are no grandchildren), and moved on to paper correspondence. Letters! Postal mail. Epistles. Why I have saved so much of my correspondence from 1975 to the present, I cannot explain. Maybe that’s a thing that people who love words just naturally do, the same reason I have kept so many books. I certainly don’t need all of it; but that was part of the task, sorting what I want to keep and agreeing to recycle the rest. I also found odd ephemera, such as photocopied posters for long-ago poetry readings, broadsides of poems, xerox-zines from the early 1980s, and ancient mixtapes on cassette.

~

There’s some sorrow with this project. So many of my former correspondents have died. I find my grandmother’s looping script, my dad’s distinctive handwriting, my dear friend David Dunn’s nearly-illegible scrawl. Reminders of times past. Maybe that is why we keep ephemera: to remember what we thought, at the time, was important.

Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, by the time we reach our later decades–if we’re fortunate enough to reach them.

I keep gardens for different reasons. Not to remember the past but to see what the present can bring.

~speaking of the present~

My new book can now be ordered from the publisher, if you find Amazon problematic (and there are good reasons for that). The link is here.

Aft a-gley

Today marked the first day of the Fall semester at the college, but I had no reason to be there. Instead, I enjoyed the surprisingly fine August weather, harvested tomatoes and basil, and began the much-delayed task of weeding our numerous perennial beds. At 4 pm, I rested in the hammock after a walk and spent a few minutes reveling in retirement; though generally I’ve been too busy to find myself in reflective or relaxation mode, it was nice to pretend for awhile.

Yes–I wanted to read books in that hammock, and get to the community pool, and hang out with friends on the patio until the bats came out and the last fireflies gleamed over the meadow. Ah, but Robert Burns nailed it: “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft a-gley.” There were so many other things to do.

That said, while I did not do the Sealey Challenge this August, I managed to read several really terrific poetry books–and the month’s not over yet! To keep this post brief, I’ll just mention the book I’m reading now, Jennifer Franklin’s stellar new collection If Some God Shakes Your House. Lots of (mostly) non-rhyming sonnets, a series of memento mori poems, and lyrically linked poems titled “As Antigone–” connect anger, grief, and suggest that anti-authoritarian acts are often more about love than bravery. The speaker keeps denying that bravery’s behind her disobedience, but these poems are brave. I found many of them utterly heart-breaking, so it may not be an “easy read” if you want something cheerful to uplift a low mood. Nonetheless, Franklin’s poems secure hope to love so intensely I could not look away and keep returning to them even before I have finished the book.

I grew up confusing opinion
with oracle. She reminded me
all men are dangerous, each time
I left the house alone….

Jennifer Franklin

It can be difficult to avoid comparing such strong poetry with…well, with what I write. I think that most writers do this occasionally, some more than others. If one is a competitive or ambitious person, analysis and comparisons may be second nature; I have known poets who feel dismayed by their own inadequacy compared to the “greats,” and poets who felt bitterly overlooked because they didn’t get the attention or lauding other writers garnered. Either way is a trap, though. In general, I look to admirable literature as something to enjoy, learn from, admire, and to analyze to figure out how it can be done. If I have ambition, it is the ambition to learn. Oh yeah, the autodidact in me again!

And speaking of ambition, or lack thereof, I am far behind in promoting my book. Next post should contain details of the book launch in the Chicago area (September 9), and perhaps other writing-related newsiness.

Goals, sort of

http://www.wmo.int/gfcs/idmp

Our regional drought continues. I sometimes entertain the idea that the universe is telling me I might as well consider moving to the Southwest–where my children now reside–since the Mid-Atlantic area currently has less rainfall, higher temperatures, and lower humidity than where they are. Granted, this is likely to be a temporary situation; but for the present, I get the chance to walk on crunchy grass and hard soil daily and see how I like it. And to see blue skies for days on end, and see how I like that. What next?

Speculating on “what next” comes rather naturally to me, a reflective sort of human being; but making goals and ambitions toward accomplishment–not so much. Lately, though, the years-ahead thinking has been moved the forefront of my thoughts. It’s all those dang Medicare and Social Security and AARP mailings, in part, and my peers and I heading into the so-called retirement years. Inescapable: the conversations crop up around the dinner party table, while having coffee with a pal, or on a phone call with siblings. People keep asking me what my new goals are. I suppose, having reached the age Social Security (used to) kick in, I was expected to come up with new goals? Must have missed that memo.

Goal: the word is of uncertain origin, says Etymology Online, but appears in the 14th c “with an apparent sense of ‘boundary, limit.’ Perhaps from Old English *gal ‘obstacle, barrier,’ a word implied by gælan ‘to hinder’ and also found in compounds (singal, widgal). That would make it a variant or figurative use of Middle English gale ‘a way, course’…” And there’s the further meaning of a stake that signals the end point of a game. Interesting that goal can be an obstacle, a limitation, an end-point, or a pathway.

If I think of it as a pathway, the question is, what do I want to do? After many years as an educator…do I throw all that experience away and take up something else? My guess is that I’ll find myself imparting information of some kind, one way or another, regardless of employment status. So no major change of course, just a change of scenery, situation, or audience. After all, I will still be writing.

Or are we talking aspirations? What is it I would like to plan for…self care? travel? conferences and retreats? Time to do–what, exactly, and with whom? Here there are perhaps barriers and limitations: can we ever stop worrying about how much will it cost and how much time it will take to achieve the specified goals? And obstacles–you cannot plan for them. Maybe I go blind or get cancer or get hit by a bus. Maybe the apocalypse occurs in my lifetime. That would certainly be the stake that signifies “game over!”

Then again, what if my plans are to get into the woods more, sit under trees more, take more walks, read more books, tend to plants and animals, hang out with my beloveds, write poems? Those things, I want to do in future. But it isn’t as though I am not already doing them now.

Photo by Michael Heinrich on Pexels.com