THE LONELY CAMELLIA

 

I always capture the first camellia to bloom in the back yard; however, three large bees fought me for possession rights today. Here it is December 30, and two blooms have appeared overnight, challenging the massive ginger plant growing beside  the drive of my home in New Iberia, Louisiana. The ginger (almost tree height now) managed to survive several frosts this year and was a daily sight of hope, despite the hovering coronavirus.

My deceased godfather, Markham Peacock, planted the now-towering camellia bush in 1995. It persists, despite lack of fertilizer or new soil, watering, covering to avoid freezes, any TLC. The secret ingredient must be a hovering spirit of love of beauty Markham left behind.

I helped him plant the camellia pictured above, along with two more that gave up during the first year of growth. I’ve written about the plant several times because I admire the flower’s endurance — it represents persistence and resistance, clinging to the banks of an unattractive coulee, resisting winters that lately remind me more of icy temps at our other home in Sewanee, Tennessee.

Unlike women gardeners of the 1940s and 1950s who lived here in the South, I’m not too keen on the cultivation of flowers. Still, I admire gardeners and read books about authentic plant growers of flowers such as the enduring and ubiquitous camellia. I respect their impact on their caretakers, e.g., Eudora Welty, notable author and gardener, and her mother Chestina, who had a lovely garden in Jackson, Mississippi, many decades ago. Chestina valued gardening as “a way to gain insight that could be applied to life in a broader sense. A garden is a grand teacher. It teaches patience and careful watchfulness…Above all, it teaches entire trust…”*

Oops! How I’ve ignored that bit of counsel! The Weltys staked their camellias and made little slipcovers to prevent them from freezing. They watered and applied fertilizers, believed that their plants had aesthetic value… And they would’ve cast me out of their paradisaical garden in a heartbeat. I wonder if Lady Clare camellias still grow under Eudora’s bedroom window of her home in Jackson, Mississippi. When I visited her home and garden a few years ago, I felt like a traitor to the caretaking of my lonely camellia.

I console myself by thinking that perhaps because I’ve written so many poems about this courageous flower, it does receive some form of nourishment via literature. Or the spirit of Markham’s love of aesthetic creations persists…

 

* One Writer’s Garden by Susan Haltom and Jane Roy Brown.

Photograph of camellia from my backyard by Victoria I. Sullivan

 

 

 

 

 

MAINLY COLD

 

Over a half-century ago, I lived in a place unsuited to my Louisiana warm blood. Although the temps here are closer to 48 degrees above zero, I was reminded of the 48 below zero temps I endured in Maine one winter. The place: a small town called Limestone; the reason I’d been displaced there: the US Army. No, I wasn’t a GI at the time, but my former spouse had been assigned as an Army radar specialist attached to a SAC base in Limestone. The big joke was that we had endured the heat of El Paso, Texas because of some perverse military reason and were then sent to Limestone, Maine, where winters were harshest in the northeastern US. 

 

Maine was a place where native Abenaki tribes called themselves “People of the Sunrise.” The irony is that the sun was seldom seen, especially that winter in 1954. However, like the Abenaki, we reached out for the rising sun daily.

The average Maine temps in January that year I resided in Limestone dipped to about 15 degrees Farenheit and summer came late. L. L. Bean of present-day fame hadn’t become a popular outdoor outlet, so I didn’t have access to bulky sweaters or sturdy shoes, and my first walk in downtown Limestone in southern loafers resulted in a fall on ice. However, the air seemed clean, and the town boasted of the Robert Frost Memorial library.

 

Due to Scots-Irish immigrants' efforts, the potato had become a leading crop in Maine, and Aroostook County (Limestone) remains the primary producer of this crop. Potatoes were the major daily fare on our table. When we mustered out of the Army after trying to live on non-commissioned officer’s pay, we’d gained weight. The leading causes of our change to "rotundity": potatoes and Texas pinto beans!

This present state of isolation due to Covid reminds me of that winter isolation in Limestone when I spent hours reading and listening to Tchaikovsky (his 5th symphony, for some melancholy reason), and trying to escape a neighbor who wanted to play Canasta from 8 a.m. until 4 p.m. while chain-smoking Herbert Tareyton cigarettes.

We were discharged in May, so I never saw the Annual Crown of Maine Balloon Festival that occurs in Caribou, a few miles away from Limestone. Nor did I get to visit the Acadian Historic Village near Van Buren although most people who live in and around Van Buren are of French Canadian descent, and I would’ve been at home among these Acadians.

While visiting the Frost Memorial Library, I discovered the writings of Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-1909) who spent most of her life in South Berwick, Maine and whose writing featured the speech and character of ordinary Mainers. I’ve read and re-read The Country of the Pointed Firs, perhaps because a teacher of English Literature once told me my writing style reminded her of Jewett’s writing. I’d have preferred a comparison to Maine born Edna St. Vincent Millay who became famous for “Renascence,” but Jewett’s A Country Doctor is a notable classic, and I still appreciate the comparison.

Snow fell constantly that winter and reached the height of telephone poles, but French fries and pinto beans…and, oh, occasionally a bowl of blueberries…sustained us. And bravo the earmuff, invented by Chester Greenwood, a fifteen year old boy who saved us from frostbite.

 

Image on cover by Paul E. Marquart, my brother.

 

 

POUF OR POOH, EITHER WILL DO

This problem occurred in the early morning when I awakened. Should a blogger write about a “pouf” or a stuffed bear that has survived the tale of Winnie the Pooh?

The pouf is a new addition to our living room in New Iberia, Louisiana. It’s a round ottoman that looks like a blue sea urchin poised to consume tired feet after they have been pacing all day indoors while the corona virus rages out there in the threatening yonder. This pouf could be a puffy hairstyle or a dress gathered into a puff, or a headdress, but in the case of this household, it’s just an ottoman.

Now, the stuffed bear in question bears the name of Jimmy Bear, so named for my deceased Uncle Jimmy, and he looks as though he were wounded in the War of 1940, several limbs still heavily bandaged from a battle between me and my older brother Paul. Years ago, Paul had written a one-page story about this bear, then claimed the stuffed animal as his own. To no avail. I won that battle by right of possession. The bear was mine, and it sits on a blue stool in my bedroom. It’s a reminder of my Uncle Jimmy and of a happy childhood that included a library of children’s books, including Winnie the Pooh my mother purchased during WWII when goods were rationed. 

The bear’s subject was inspired by discovering a photo of me at age four sitting beside Uncle Jimmy on the lawn of my grandmother Marquart’s home in Lake Arthur, Louisiana, the infamous bear lying in front of us. Two days ago, I sent the photo to my first cousin Mina Raymond in Baton Rouge, then ordered a copy of Winnie the Pooh. Further inspiration came from reading aloud verses from Now We Are Six by A. A. Milne, my feet propped on the pouf.

Pouf and Pooh seemed to belong with each other.

“Don’t you ever think about commonplace things?” my friend Vickie asked.

“Well, I learned from reading about the Laurel People of the Cherokee Little People that we shouldn’t take the world too seriously, and we must always have joy and share joy with others,” I answered.

“You could give more simple replies,” she said, feigning impatience.

“Laurel people are humorous. It’s better than being Rock People who practice getting even because one’s space has been invaded.”

“You think too much.”

Perhaps she’s right. However, as I meditate on Pouf and Pooh, or even Laurel People, I conclude that pondering can be a healthy activity. So, I think I’ll put my feet up on the pouf and read about Pooh Bear holding a balloon and ascending into a blue sky instead of succumbing to thoughts about the black cloud of the virus hovering out yonder.

 

Photograph by Victoria Sullivan

 

 

 

WHEELS

 

“Plasma Yellow Pearl?”

 

Yep, that’s the color — the color of the new 2021 Subaru Crosstrek parked under our carport. And, believe me, the strange hue has incited more comment than I care to hear. I think the color is either olive or avocado, but I’ve never claimed to be a conventional type person who would follow my grandfather’s color preferences.

Grandfather Paul Greenlaw, who sold Ford autos from 1908 (Model T’s) until the early 1940s would have disowned me if he’d seen this audacious car in our drive. A conservative man, Paul Greenlaw, sold mostly black and a few blue autos, but plasma yellow pearl?! He should have lived until the 1950s when Ford offered buyers an olive-colored (not plasma yellow) Mustang during the “pony car” craze when Cobras, Mustangs, and Thunderbirds flooded the market.

For some inexplicable reason, the Plasma Pearl Yellow Subaru purchase inspired me to order back issues of the Ford Times, a now-defunct magazine published from 1908 until 1919 when publication halted, then resumed in 1943 until 1993.

A small magazine 4” x 6” and later 5”x7," I discovered copies of this treasure on Grandfather Paul’s desk on the sleeping porch of his Victorian house in Franklinton, Louisiana. I was fascinated by the paintings (lots of watercolors), travel destinations, articles about restaurants, festival listings and other feature stories, and illustrations of the latest lines of Ford automobiles that I coveted at the time Grandfather owned this automobile franchise. In the attic of his home, I also surreptitiously played thick recordings in which a high pitched voice belted out “Henry’s Made A Lady Out of Lizzie.”

The sight of all the Fords featured in Ford Times created feelings of nostalgia for the old Ford coupes in the showroom of Motor Sales and Service on the main thoroughfare of Franklinton, Louisiana, as well as feelings of being a traitor to Grandfather Paul’s favored line of automobiles…especially since the Subaru is such a “loud” color. However, at the age of approaching 86, I’m sorta’ glad to present evidence that I still have some reputation for being just a little outrageous.

 

Photograph by Victoria Sullivan 

 

 

PANSIES

Pansies 211 Celeste Dr.

After they took down the wrought iron fence that surrounded the yard on 10th Avenue, the yard looked bare. They also removed the cattle guard on the drive because new town laws prohibited cows from grazing on residential lots… except for the milk cow grazing on an empty lot that I avoided when I walked up the street to visit my Aunt Kathryn. The barrenness of the front yard and drive troubled my Grandmother Nell. So she decided to put in pansies in front of the tall steps leading to the front porch. She didn’t turn the ground herself, but Ernest, the yardman, dug a large round bed that covered half the front yard, and she put in pansies using a trowel with a splintered handle and adding a small amount of Vigoro and water.

“Frost won’t kill them,” she said to my aunt. “They can weather as low as 25 degrees. I’ll put in purple ones for sure. They’re symbols of love. My granddaughter will like them.” I was only three years old when she began her landscaping project, but  to her I seemed old enough to appreciate the beauty of flowers. I also knew what love was because she told me often how much she loved me.

Era Leader Clipping

She sent brief messages to the society column of the Era Leader, the town of Franklinton's newspaper of note: “Little Miss Diane Marquart of Baton Rouge is spending the week with her grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. P.E Greenlaw.” She felt that the message distinguished our family living in a provincial southeastern Louisiana town of 1,000 or more inhabitants. After all, little Miss was the granddaughter of a Greenlaw, a descendant of the Scots clan among the Humes, although I’m sure no one in that small redneck town knew or cared about the lineage of the Greenlaws. Or about my frequent visits to that community.

However, Grandmother Nell clipped and pasted these society mentions in a scrapbook that is now stored in a sideboard of my living room in New Iberia, Louisiana. I was three when she showed me the circular bed of purple pansies. “Puppy dog noses,” I promptly said, and she clapped her hands as if I’d vocalized the most precocious statement of any three-year old in the world.

Those colorful symbols of her affection became my favorite flower — and remain my favorite flower, planted every fall, sometimes in the spring, by friends who know this story about the language of love that flowers impart.

 

Photography by Victoria Sullivan

 

 

FROM MY WINDOW OVERLOOKING THE BACKYARD

 

Don’t know whether a bird in hand is worth two in the bird bath or not, but we don’t have any problems with our stone bath in the backyard inviting in even one feathered friend because it’s always empty — on purpose. I mean, most Louisiana bird baths should be re-composed as planters, backyard decor, or something other than hold a place where immodest birds flock to bathe naked daily. In reality, if water is left in these stone bowls, they draw in Louisiana mosquitoes the size of horseflies, and mosquitoes draw in rats and snakes. Right?

Half the time, the bowl of our bird bath in the New Iberia back yard lies upended on the ground, but a hurricane isn’t the cause of its upending. Judging from the population of raccoons, an armadillo, marauding dogs and cats around us, I think that the bath is a target for some animal game called “tip the tub.” Most of the time, the bowl lies on the ground looking as if it’s anticipating becoming a planter we should fill with vegetation that will survive backyard shade.

Our smaller bird bath in the yard at Sewanee, Tennessee, isn’t often visited unless it’s filled with purified water, and I think the birds have taken on some of the “entitled” aspects of the clergy/scholars who live in that rarefied Sewanee atmosphere. They turn up their beaks at ordinary rainwater. Most of the time, in both locales, New Iberia and Sewanee, we don’t fill the bowls of the baths because squirrels come calling if they see the water. We’ve caught Squirrel Nutkin swishing his tail in the Sewanee bath several times — and we won’t comment on pesky squirrels that inhabit both Louisiana and Tennessee yards... but I’ve been known to threaten to order a b-b rifle similar to the one I gave my brother Harold on his 7th birthday and …

Well, hummingbirds don’t drink water, and I’m partial to that species of bird life, so I’m thinking of planting coral bells, columbine, or coreopsis in the upturned mouth of the empty bird bath at planting time. The red blooms will look great against the background of the new cedar fence at which the hounds next door bark despite the wall’s impassive, uninviting stance.

 

Photograph by Victoria Sullivan

 

 

FENCES

In “Mending Wall,” Robert Frost concludes a short poem with the often-quoted line, “Good fences make good neighbors.” Today, I thought of Frost’s poem as I looked out at our new cedar fence that divides our yard and the backyard of a new neighbor who lives on one side of our home in New Iberia, Louisiana. On the opposite side of our yard, I look out at a sagging, gray-colored, older fence, one that leans toward our drive, and which I prefer because it reminds me of the neighbor who planted satsuma trees on his side of the fence and from which we have always plucked overhanging fruit.

This good neighbor died of pancreatic cancer several decades ago. He was an amiable man who came over, at no one’s request, and raked our entire front yard following a major Louisiana hurricane. He verged on mute because he performed the task quietly, then returned to his side of the fence as if he had tended to the grooming of his own yard. I never knew anything about this neighbor’s lineage, but when satsumas form and hang over his old fence, in my mind I see a face that looks almost Native American.

He had hair the color of the ravens that nest in a tree beside his former home, a sallow complexion (perhaps caused by his disease) but he was a handsome, lonely looking fellow (although he had a wife and three young children). When I remember this man who spontaneously performed small tasks in my yard, I think of Cherokee people I had seen near Silva, North Carolina, persons whose appearance resembled the quiet neighbor, who lived and continue to live  in harmony with nature, have kind hearts, and are known as wonder workers.


 

 

Our new cedar fence on the opposite side of our home divides us from a dog yard surrounded by a flimsy wire fence that two hounds push down if they’re roaming around outside and from which they could leap over and into our yard at one time but can no longer scale because of our newly-built tall cedar one. The cedar fence is handsome and was expensive to erect, but it isn’t a wall that inspires sentiment like the old sagging fence on the other side of our drive— one that brings up cogent memories within me — those of the kind-hearted neighbor who embodied Frost’s line, “Good fences make good neighbors.”

 

Photographs by Victoria I. Sullivan

 

LIGHT IN A GLASS ROOM

Glass porch in the morning

The glass porch in our Louisiana home is my favorite room. True, the glass is smudged with bayou country grime from lack of care during the months we are away. Or perhaps the glass is cloudy because the porch is a place friends have visited to tell some dark stories about broken relationships, illnesses, quarrels — the glass porch has often housed usual and unusual tales of human tragedies.

However, this four-season indoor/outdoor room also holds the hopes for new perspective…it is a living room with a better view. Sometimes I go there to write, but the room doesn’t invite labor or action. I frequently fall asleep sitting in a comfortable wicker chair while the sunlight beams through on my winter-pale face.

The room also houses a few of the glass pieces created by Karen Bourque, a talented Church Point, Louisiana artist, and adds to the idea of inspiring joy in this life, albeit smudged with our tragic stories.

All homes should have such a room, perhaps now more than ever in this time of Covid. I went into the glass sanctuary this morning to share in the grief of my dear friend, Kathy, who lives in Sewanee, Tennessee, and who just lost her sister, Mary Kay, to the dread Covid disease.

Wicker chair on glass porch

The glass porch is also a place of prayer. Another smudge has appeared on the glass, and another prayer goes up for Kathy’s release from suffering. The sun fills Karen’s pieces with light in this small blessed space, and I ponder the idea of glassing in our little front porch at Sewanee. However, the porch faces dark woods and only collects shadows…and spiders.

Vickie Sullivan’s photographs capture the essence of this space on a cold winter morning, and I wish that I could say, “Come and sit awhile,” but this open-to-sunlight room doesn’t tolerate masked visitors!

 

 

RIDGES IN GLASS

Cheniere glass art by Karen Bourque

I have the good fortune of owning fourteen glass pieces created by Karen Bourque, the masterful glass artist of Church Point, Louisiana. Many of these pieces have been photographed for the covers of my books of poetry and now hang on the glass porch of our Celeste residence here in New Iberia, Louisiana, and in the windows of our home on Fairbanks Circle in Sewanee, Tennessee.

 

Karen’s latest glass piece is her interpretation of a Louisiana Cheniere, or ridge, and will be featured in the spring edition of Pinyon Review along with several of my poems. The featured poems derive from Ridges, a book of my poetry that Pinyon Publishing will publish this summer.

 

Karen’s latest piece is a beautiful work of stained glass, Apache Tear, and Kyamite that she created this year. It now hangs on the glass porch of my home here in New Iberia, Louisiana. As I look at the purple sky overhanging a cheniere, I’m lifted out of the Covid doldrums and remember a brighter day's visit I made to Cheniere au Tigre many years ago when three female companions and I traveled by boat to this site.

 

Diane on way to Cheniere au Tigre

Karen’s renderings always evoke strong emotional responses in me. A unique non-traditional glass artist, she creates most of her work in a studio beside the Bourque home that she shares with the former poet laureate and humanist, Darrell Bourque. Before the dreaded Covid caused me and my friends to sequester ourselves, I often visited there.

Karen’s work is featured in the Ernest Gaines Center at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, in a window depicting the Holy Spirit at Christ the King Roman Catholic Church near Opelousas Louisiana, at the Louisiana Book Festival, in an issue of Pinyon Review, and many other venues and homes.

As the maxim reads, “One picture is worth a thousand words,” and this photo of Karen Bourque’s latest rendering affirms that critique. Briefly said, her work is a spiritual experience. 

 

 

PRESENCE

 

Sister Mary Zita's cap

Here it is—a rose-colored cap with red and white stars on it—the last thing Sister Elizabeth slipped into a bag of snacks for us when we left Sewanee a few weeks ago. It was an object that brought forth in me a “gusher” of tears. The cap belonged to Sister Mary Zita, one of the Anglican Sisters at St. Mary’s Convent, Sewanee, Tennessee who sat in her wheelchair before me at weekly Services. She died this year while I was in New Iberia, Louisiana.

Sister Mary Zita is memorialized in many of my books of poetry, and while I wrote about her gardening and flower arranging talents, a paramount thought surfaced when I pulled out the rose-colored cap that was of something called “presence.” Although this small Filipino Sister could read the liturgies in the Book of Common Prayer and was often an echo after each line we recited, she never conversed with me or others in chapel (except with Sister Elizabeth}. She just embodied “presence.”

When I was enrolled in Clinical Pastoral Education preceding my ordination as a deacon in the Episcopal Diocese of Western Louisiana, I learned a lot about presence, the act of being at a bedside without speaking or reciting prayers—just standing alongside a suffering person in inviolate silence, perhaps inwardly praying or just being there in the co-inherence of suffering. Fully Present.

My good friend, Janet Fault-Gonzales wrote a powerful essay about Presence in her book entitled Road Home that I feel is one of the best I’ve read on the subject. It involves a eulogy written at the death of her beloved Grandmother Mae:

“In trying to prepare myself to give her up, I realized in the months prior to her death that my grandmother was the still point for me—the center of peace and stability inside of a world that has proven to be much harder than I anticipated. When everything else I had known seemed chaotic and changing, Mae had been the same. She had been there. That’s all she had to be. She didn’t have to be anything else … She’s the greatest loss I have had. Today, my heart aches for someone with whom I talked about pinks, bachelor buttons, glads, zinnias, and roses—grown from seeds supplied by the Standard Coffee salesman. It isn’t what Mae said or what she accomplished that affected and still affects all of us (family)—it’s simply that she was there.

“Once I heard a minister deliver a sermon about ‘being there.’ He said that our attendance at church makes a difference, not only in our lives, but also in the lives of others. I thought the sermon was about role modeling and influencing others by our attendance. But what I learned from Mae isn’t about role modeling, intentionally setting an example. It’s simply about being—having presence—contributing to others because you exist, hold a place for all you love. Mae remained in Eufaula as the same, the comfortable, the familiar that my relatives still hold dear—that place her sisters and brothers couldn’t get back to but they’re glad to have had—the place where it hurts most to lose: her presence. It’s a powerful thing to be who you are …”

I’ve read and re-read Janet’s essays many times, but the memory of that particular essay always comes up when I think about the word “presence.” I chided Sister Elizabeth for causing me to cry when she passed on Mary Zita’s cap to me, a soft cushion of stars hidden among snacks for the journey back to New Iberia. However it is now a “presence” in my bedroom that reminds me of a “center of peace, stability inside a world that has proven to be much harder than I anticipated …”

Thanks for the cap, Sister Elizabeth.

PINYON REVIEW #18, FALL 2020

I wish that Gary Entsminger, former editor and publisher of Pinyon Publishing, had lived to see Pinyon Review #18, the journal he and his wife Susan birthed during his lifetime. This latest special journal with hand sewn Japanese Stab Binding on Mohawk Loop Inkwell Vellum EcoWhite Paper is a limited edition dedicated to Stuart Friebert. The work of Friebert, poet and translator of international fame, first appeared in Pinyon Publishing’s inventory with the award-winning book, Floating Heart, and his work remained a constant contribution to the publications of Pinyon until his death this year.

Susan Entsminger, now editor and publisher of Pinyon Review, introduced this special edition with a brief poem of her own entitled “Perspective,” and voiced the lament that the “sequences” in her life, “which had become as sacred as ritual” are no longer (referring, perhaps, to the sudden death of her beloved husband, Gary.) However, she also speaks of “staying suspended in the universe,” a phrase attributed to the poet, XIA Haitao, whose work appears in this issue of Pinyon Review.

Some of the outstanding authors who have appeared in former issues of Pinyon and whose books have been published by this independent press include Chuck Taylor, Luci Shaw, Martha McFerren, and Neil Harrison. However, more recent poets such as XIA Haitao will transport readers into vistas overlooking the sea from the summit of Mount Tai in China and from which Susan Entsminger derived the line, “Only when you stay suspended in the universe,” in her introduction to this issue of Pinyon Review. During this time of Covid-19, the particular line that resonated with me and inspired me to read further was XIA Haitao’s long poem covering almost ten pages about a mountain that “has been standing/ since 2.4 billion years ago/in silence as if nothing has ever happened/to him.” It’s a tribute poem that illustrates the lastingness of both geographical formations and poetry, and the appearance of Chinese script, side by side with the poem enhances the format of the translation and contributes to the international flavor of this artistic journal published in southern Colorado.

I loved the imagery about a Religious figure in Mark Mitchell’s “Past,” in lines like “…Relics lack/substance, but they can grow real again. She/kept holy cloths handy in case someone/happened past her room — they must never see/through the spells she’d been taught by evil nuns…” The imagery reminded me of supernatural inhabitants in the works of New Orleans author Anne Rice’s works about other world spirits. Mitchell’s poem is brief but is a powerful evocation of the “also world,” which a Religious friend calls the afterlife.

Maria Roca’s contribution of “It’s Always Windy in Portbou,” translated from the Catalan by Sonia Alland and formatted side by side with the Portuguese version, features more of Susan’s placement of multilingual renditions and is a gusty lyric that “pushes a train car over and it falls on the tracks like an enormous dead animal…blows with sudden blasts…everyone tousled with hair blown backwards or forwards…” The poem will remind Louisiana readers of the furious hurricanes that beset Acadian residents in Louisiana each year. Powerful phrasing that describes“windows trembling and beds shaking," may be traumatic for southern Louisianans, but the translation redeems itself with the line that concludes “everything [is] purified by the wind.” However, as a part-time Louisiana resident, I would venture that we’d rather not experience that form of redemption,

A special section by Richard Kent is another example of Pinyon’s photographic surprises. Kent introduces ‘Lessons in Recursion’ in which a recursive image of a scene captured in photography may alter a viewer’s perspective of an ordinary landscape. When Kent encounters blank wooden signs in which messages have been erased by wear and time, he creates “recursive progressions” or transformations of place by photographing landscape scenes and placing the images on blank signs, some of which might startle viewers as they travel through various states. Seven signs showcase his complex photographic representations, several of which are attached to trees throughout the US.

As usual, this Pinyon Review #18 is a small masterpiece, a volume that will invite new readers and delight old ones as well. This edition is a wonderful tribute to Stuart Friebert and to the Entsmingers for preserving outstanding literary and artistic contributions. It contains some of the creative output of our country’s best word and visual artists.

Copies available through links above or snail mail from Pinyon Publishing, 23847 V66 Trail, Montrose, CO 81403.

 

A SALUTE TO STUART FRIEBERT AND LISTENING ALL NIGHT TO THE RAIN

Although my blogging has suffered a gradual demise, when notable books and events cause a stir in this isolated household, I feel an old impulse to write a few lines as I am doing this morning after receiving Pinyon Publishing’s latest book of poetry, Listening All Night to the Rain by Su Dongpo (Su Shi) and translated by Jiann I. Li and David Young.  This collection of poems arrived the same day as I received notice that a friend and “comrade in words” (as Stuart Friebert inscribed one of his books to me) had died. The Pinyon publication, Listening All Night to the Rain is a translated book of poetry from one of Friebert’s colleagues at Oberlin College where Friebert formed the Oberlin Creative Writing program and co-founded Oberlin College Press.

Friebert was a poetry pen pal of mine who endorsed several of my books and who was a master of poetic translations. He not only inspired poets and translators, he wrote precise and extraordinary poetry and prose and received The Ohioana Book Award for his book of poetry, Floating Heart published by Pinyon in 2014. In that collection of poems, he wrote about his own “Eve of the End:” “No one told us anything about/ this before we started out. When we’re out/of sight, you may go back to your reading,/but expect a bright light,/your eyes to blink.” I think he wrote his own wry epitaph. A man who loved word play, Friebert often sent e-mails to me that showed his playful and endearing personality. I valued his insights about writing poetry (“learn to be lightning”) and his willingness to be audacious about whatever vocation a person pursues in life. 

Jiann I. Lin and David Young, who translated Listening All Night to the Rain, must have pleased Friebert with their choice of poems from Su Dongpo that “combine simplicity with universality” David Young writes in the Introduction to this volume. According to Young, Taoism and Zen Buddhism helped show the 11th-century poet Su Dongpo the way to wonder and delight and reinforced his poetic sensibilities. Readers can visualize him wandering through remote Chinese provinces, living through exiles because of his political affiliations and writing quatrains about his excursions, sometimes involving heavy drinking during his explorations.

Su Dongpo’s brother, Su Zhe, was also a poet, and Su Dongpo exchanged poems, as well as gossip, with him in deeply emotional poems using brief and beautiful imagery that characterizes Chinese poetry: “The lamp drops cinders/the darkening candle wick/hangs down/I poke the ashes in the stove/over and over/sniffing the last fragrance…across the sea between us/the moon shies clear as crystal/I share it with him now.”

I enjoyed many of the temple poems; e.g., “At a temple, asked to help name a pavilion:” “Glory will flourish and decay/as transitory/as any wind or thunder./What lasts can be/as simple as/red blooming flowers./The master priest sits quietly/watching an empty shelf/thinking about a name,/observing the concept of ‘real’/and also the concept of ‘nothingness’/because they’re both the same.” Like most of the lyrics in this collection, this collection reflects the economy of Oriental poetry; but the compression still conveys time and place without exaggerated documentation.

The wandering and exposure to rain, snow, and seasonal changes sometimes troubles this vagabond poet, and he often expresses a weariness with which aging readers can identify: From “A Weary night”: “In this lonely village/one dog barks all night/the moon wanes/few people on the road/my thinning hair /has turned bright white/my years of travel have taught me/how to be homesick/out in the empty fields/spinster cicadas are buzzing/nothing to show for their labor/nothing accomplished.” 

For readers who’re drawn to Oriental poetry, Su Dongpo offers eloquent and peaceful reading during this time of stress and isolation due to disease and political upheaval in our country. The book is one that expresses the poet’s enduring spirit through adversities where he endures punishments for his political associations. In “At Spirit Mountain, touring with friends in rain,” he thumbs his nose at bureaucrats “off duty,” “…I’ve spent the day/ strolling around/with my two friends/here in the rain and mist/big magpies soar/rising up and diving down/while travelers cross/appearing and disappearing/among the groves of trees.”

Listening All Night to the Rain contains the Chinese version of all poems on opposite pages from the English version pages, and a look at the enchanting symbols made me wish that I’d learned another language to translate as Stuart Friebert once urged me to do.

The book could be viewed as another tribute to the master translator, Friebert. It’s a wonderful collection by Jiann I. Lin and David Young and emerges as another of Pinyon Publishing’s remarkable publications. Kudos to Susan Entsminger, who continues to carry the tradition of excellent literature established by her and her deceased husband, Gary Entsminger.

Copies available at Pinyon Publishing, 23847 V66 Trail, Montrose, CO 81403

ENTERING THE DAY: POEMS BY MICHAEL MILLER. (Pinyon Publishing).

BACK TO BLOGGING BOOK REVIEWS…

Wars leave scars in the minds of those who serve in any military conflict, and survivors often share their experiences through journaling, drawing, writing poetry, and novels. In Michael Miller’s case, he records glimpses of several wars through his own experience and the engagements of his relatives in military conflict. Although he reflects on other experiences “entering the day,” his accounts of servicemen during several wars are the most arresting poems in this volume. 

In “A Different Time,” Miller reflects on the experience of  a Marine who landed on Okinawa during World War II during his walk across a meadow in Massachusetts, “far from the black sand of that island/Where he left his blood;/His Purple Heart remain[ing] in/the glove compartment of His Buick beside his pistol,…” this poem followed by  “Tide of Blood,” a powerful salute to those whose “lives deprived /Of their future, the letters/He was asked to mail, ‘In case,’/And with each whiskey and cigarette/Another comrade appears, his face/Still innocent across the table.” Although Miller, of course, did not serve in this conflict, he recounts the experience as if he had served alongside the narrator in a convincing unsentimental portrait of a WWII survivor.

Miller’s own experiences in war are encapsulated in Section V, Verse VII, a powerful retrospective poem familiar to many veterans of the Vietnam conflict: “Only once did we visit/The wall, move our fingers/Over the chiseled names,/The Marines we knew./Flowers, photographs,/Letters and crayon drawings/Rested before the wall./No one walked away with/Their head held high.” This poem invoked a poignant memory of an encounter with a Vietnam veteran when I attended The Sixth Day course in upper state New York. A survivor of the Vietnam War stood up among 300 participants at this event where we had been “processing” experiences all night, and as the sun came up, he confessed that he was deeply hurt because he had been maligned as a veteran of that conflict and never properly thanked for his service. The moderator told him to stand up and declared, “In the name of the president of the United States and all U.S. citizens, we thank you for your service and remember all who served in this conflict.” Two weeks later, after we had returned home, we read about the wall going up, and I’ve always believed we had something to do with this commemoration.

Miller does not leave readers suspended with dark reflections and redeems his experiences with a more hopeful poem entitled “On Nauset Beach,” where “beyond [his] limitations of old age…” “he strides through the surprise/Of an unswept morning/On a shoulder of Nauset Beach/Singing to the Atlantic,/The thrashing incoming tide,/the waves breaking onto the shore/Like sleeves of ruffled lace,/The gannets swooping/With black-tipped wings/Beating a welcome…” Here is Miller at his lyrical best, counteracting the darkness of war and old age with his insightful voice and an undaunted heart.

This poet is not without humor and is capable of a comfortable irony in “Morning Song in Amherst” (his home) where Miller encounters a street person, “In July, her hair a tangled nest/No bird would return to/Beside the Dickinson home/A cigarette between/Her dirty fingers…” He suggests that Emily Dickinson would have invited the woman into her home for “a bath and breakfast” and when the woman volunteers that she slept on a bench beside the home all night and no one bothered her, Miller writes that he offered her bath and breakfast, “almost hearing Emily say, ‘Yes, oh yes!’”

In Section IV of Entering the Day, Miller’s poem about Virginia Wolfe entitled “Virginia,” shows that he can achieve that which he believes Virginia was capable of: “…her words/Were meant to be elsewhere,/In perfect sentences she could control.” That capability is shown throughout this volume, Miller’s meditations emerging with crafted control over his phrasing. Here is a true voice devoid of mawkishness in the delivery of difficult experiences — poems without cloying lamentations about the ravages of war and an uncertain future —conditions with which we are confronted in the wake of  Coronavirus, “a language wait[ing] to be heard” that Miller seems to be game for, despite…

Michael Miller has published nine poetry collections, and his first book The Joyful Dark was the Editor’s Choice winner of the McGovern Prize at Ashland Poetry Press. His poems have appeared in The Sewanee Review, The New Republic, The American Scholar, The Southern Review, and many other literary journals. In 2014 he became the First Prize Winner of the W. B. Yeats Society Poetry Award and was anthologized in Yeats 150 (Lilliput Press, Dublin).

I am proud to add that Michael Miller is a good friend and supporter of my work. Salut, Michael! We eagerly look for more. And kudos to Susan Entsminger for the lovely artwork on the cover of Entering the Day: “Protea from the Upcountry Farmer’s Market, Maui.”

Order online or from Pinyon Publishing, 23847 V66 Trail, Montrose CO 81403

Grandma's Good War Remembered Today

We are battling a virus, Covid-19, today which many refer to as "war." I'm reminded of WWII that happened during my childhood when significant sacrifices were required of all who lived during that time. My book, GRANDMA’S GOOD WAR, A Verse Retrospective of the Forties, published during the Great Recession of 2008, provides a point of identification with a period of reoccurring history that has become an important part of our modern life. One reader wrote about this book, “wherever we lived in this time our lives seemed to be almost identical, even to the knitting for war victims.” The title poem of the book recalls sacrifices of that time reminiscent of today's war against Covid-19 and the hopeful feelings we will experience about victory over this pandemic.

Grandma's Good War
I was a child during World War Two
burdened with adult tasks to do,
in backyard plots planted row after row of garden seed,
cleared away clump after clump of coco weed,
collected scrap iron by the wagonload
and stacks of newspaper, crinkled and old,
the iron to be melted for weapons of war,
the paper recycled and sent afar,
bought war stamps and war bonds from Uncle Sam,
savored lunches of Vienna sausage, tins of Spam,
complained about rations of chocolate kisses and coca-cola,
played thick, black records on an ancient Victrola,
sang “Off We Go” and war songs galore,
in air raid drills, lay stiffly on oily wood floors,
loved to say aloud “Tojo, Hitler, and Mussolini,
Okinawa, Guadalcanal, and Iwo Jima.”
On V-J Day, celebrated war’s end in a dancing crowd,
ignoring the shadow of a mushroom-shaped cloud,
was proud to be a patriot who loved the victorious USA,
remembering WWII as the period of a better day,
at armistice, believed all wars would cease …
and the world would bask in the sun of peace.

Grandma's Good War is the only book among 52 I've written that contains rhyming poetry. Stay vigilant, stay well. Plant a Victory Garden.

THE YEAR OF YELLOW JACK

Anne L. Simon has “found her oeuvre” in historical fiction. Her recent novel, The Year of Yellow Jack, is a fascinating story about New Iberia, Louisiana — the successes and tragedies of families living in this south Louisiana town of Bayou Teche country during the 19^th century. 

The Year of Yellow Jack emerges as a regional story with a universal message and is the result of Simon’s meticulous research and lively imagination. Simon’s story is told in realistic voice about a social system that prevailed during this antebellum period in southern history and includes both wealthy and enslaved characters — the Bérard and Duperier families and their antecedents, and a Haitian woman of color named Félicité.

Both the “Foreword” and “Historical Notes” in this volume indicate the depth of research and dedication to an intriguing project Simon pursued for three years and provide a sampling of her accomplished expository style. The novel is narrated in three parts and covers the multicultural mix of south Louisiana — French, Spanish, African, English, and Attakapas who settled the towns of New Iberia and St. Martinville. In this mix, Henri Frederick Duperier and Hortense Bérard emerge as major characters who marry and build a home on the banks of Bayou Teche and are joined by Félicité, the enslaved woman of color from Saint-Domingue.

Simon’s research of colonial New Iberia and St. Martinville, Louisiana includes descriptions of the prevailing attitudes toward the enslaved during the early 1800s; e.g.,the rumination of Hortense Duperier: “When I was a small child, we had many slaves in our household. Patterning my behavior on that of my mother, I expected the slaves to do without question whatever they were asked to do, even when asked by a child. I could not recall any open discussion of their inferior status. Occasionally Maman corrected my behavior. She instructed me to be courteous at all times, not out of respect for the role the slaves played in our lives, but because courtesy was expected of people of privilege. I accepted the world I had been born into as normal. I gave little thought to the personal lives of those who lived behind the woods that separated us from them…”

Simon’s descriptions of Teche country landscape during the 19^th century are succinct and skillfully done through the device of dialogue; e.g., Grandpa Bérard’s : “It was springtime in Teche country, and beautiful. The Garden of Eden, we thought. Untouched forests, not like the worn-out land we’d left behind in France. Oak, willow, and cottonwoods lined the bayous, giant cypress and tupelo trees thrived in the wetlands. Natural meadows spread to the west…” 

The major event that tied families of privilege in New Iberia and St. Martinville and the enslaved Félicité occurs in Part III of this novel when Félicité functions as a healer during the siege of yellow fever that strikes these communities. Using non-traditional medicine in the forms of hydration and herbs (fever tea), Félicité saves many lives and helps to "wash clean New Town (New Iberia)" of this deadly disease.

Interspersed in this narrative about Hortense Duperier and Félicité is a salute to Frederick Duperier — his valuable part in incorporating the town of New Iberia. The relationship of early settlers and the Atakapa Isak Nation, or the Attakapas are also included — facts corroborated by Simon through a record in the St. Martin Parish courthouse that shows Bernard, chief of the Atakapas, granting land to Hortense Duperier’s Grandfather Bérard  Such discoveries indicate Simon’s investigative abilities as well as her persistence in ferreting out facts that enhance the narrative. 

Scholarship and vision intertwine throughout this intriguing novel. Photographs included in The Year of Yellow Jack indicate the close relationship that Félicité had with the Duperier family of New Iberia — one of them features the Duperier family plot that shows Félicité’s grave marker as she is buried alongside her appreciative and respectful family.

The Year of Yellow Jack will intrigue south Louisiana residents, but its range is far-reaching in that it corroborates a major contribution made by an enslaved Haitian woman during the colonial period of American history. It also shows the bravado and competence of a widow who overcomes financial reverses and takes her place in history as an enlightened woman who refuses to be deterred by social mores. As I said, Simon has found her oeuvre in historical fiction, and The Year of Yellow Jack celebrates her place in this genre. Just as we celebrate Anne’s contribution — Brava, Anne!

Anne L.Simon was educated at Wellesley College, Yale, and LSU Law School. She was elected as a general jurisdiction trial court judge, and after mandatory retirement served in ad hoc and pro tempore appointments by the Louisiana Supreme Court, as an Appellate Court Judge for three Indian tribes in Louisiana, and was the Louisiana Court Improvement Fellow for the Pelican Center for Children and Families. She has authored three crime novels, entitled Blood in the Cane Field, Blood in the Lake, and Blood of the Believers "loosely based on her experiences."

Published by the University of Louisiana at Lafayette Press.

Note:  I am familiar with stories about the scourge of yellow fever through the Anglican Sisters of the Community of St. Mary at Sewanee who, every year, relate the legend of “The Martyrs of Memphis,” the story of  Anglican Sisters who nursed yellow fever victims in Memphis, Tennessee during the siege of 1878. I was drawn to Simon’s story because of historical similarities. However, my initial interest in Félicité began with a strange telephone call from a psychic named John Russel in San Angelo, Texas who called me one evening during the 1980s and asked if I knew why he was receiving psychic messages including my name and someone named Felicity in New Iberia. I told him I didn’t know anyone named Felicity, but I later remembered the marker honoring Félicité’s work with yellow fever located near the New Iberia Library. I never heard from this caller again. However, he had piqued my interest in the enslaved healer, and, later, I included Félicité as a character in a young adult novel entitled Flood on the Rio Teche that was more imagination and less factual than Anne Simon’s meticulously researched work of historical fiction.