SPRING’S KISS

In 2014, Border Press published Between Plants and People, a book of my poetry about plant life accompanied by eighteen color photographs by Dr. Victoria I. Sullivan, a noteworthy botanist. It contained metaphors describing the impact of plants on humans — food plants, medicinal plants, and decorative plants, and is an innovative account of “humanistic botany” in poetry.

The second volume of plant poems I wrote this summer, with accompanying photographs by Dr. Sullivan, is now in press. Spring’s Kiss, a book of poetry praising the qualities of wildflowers that inhabit and create beauty in the plant kingdoms of the world, is a nod to Susan Albert’s: “One person’s weed is another person’s wildflower,” and many of those weeds are included in this volume. Medicinal, as well as aesthetic qualities of the plants, are touted in some of the poems, and the beautiful blooms of these weeds reinforce Albert’s observation about plants.

The cover of this volume is a photograph of Karen Bourque’s glass rendition of the Pickerel Weed as inspired by Susan Elizabeth Entsminger’s illustration of the aquatic weed in Why Water Plants Don’t Drown by Victoria I. Sullivan, and the photograph was used in the cover design by Martin Romero, a landscape architect who renders the final designs for my book covers.

Spring’s Kiss can be pre-ordered from Border Press, P.O. Box 3124, Sewanee, TN 37375 for $20 including shipping and will also be available from Amazon by Aug. 15.