VISITING BIG SUR VICARIOUSLY

Coastal California Painting by Paul E. Marquart

Yesterday, we purchased several ice plants from Lapp’s Nursery near Winchester, Tennessee, and I’ve since been pondering my many side trips to Big Sur, California, where ice plants bloom freely during May.

This morning I leafed through photos of my brother Paul’s paintings of the California coast and found one that he had painted of the Big Sur area. Viewers of the photographs can even see two human figures climbing around in the rocky area. Still, none of his paintings show the wild ice plants that grow along Big Sur highways we traveled during California visits.

However, I happily remember those pink carpets covering the Big Sur area. The ice plant, a native of South Africa, was brought to the California coast during the 1970s to control erosion, but State Park officials no longer find the plants attractive or useful and encourage Big Sur residents to get rid of them. So much for aesthetics, they say, as the plant is very aggressive and can quickly cover large areas, crowding out attractive native flowers.

 

My Window Box Ice Plant

During May, if you drive along the Big Sur coast and look toward the surrounding mountainsides, you feel uplifted by seeing those pink carpets. I always liked vacation travels to the Pacific Coast, where the ice plant’s blooms engendered feelings of freedom and uplift in me.

The plants I bought yesterday are drought-resistant, which means I don’t have to worry about watering daily, so I find ice plants even more attractive. I look at the photo of brother Paul’s painting, imagining Big Sur, then back at my kitchen window box flanked by ice plants and feel my Tennessee imprisonment slowly lifting.

It’s peak ice plant season along the rocky coast of California and near my kitchen window box, so perhaps I’ll celebrate my birthday month by buying more mementos of past adventures along the California coast to satisfy my constant wanderlust. But I have serious doubts.

 

Photograph by Victoria Sullivan. Painting by Paul E. Marquart.

 

 

 

PINYON REVIEW 19, SPRING 2021, LIMITED EDITION

Chenier, a glass piece by Karen Bourque

This pocket-sized literary and art journal is another hand-sewn treasure produced by talented Susan Entsminger, editor/publisher of Pinyon Publishing in Montrose, Colorado. Susan, who began her artistic work alongside her husband, Gary Entsminger, (deceased) a decade or more ago, has continued designing and producing unique poetry and art books since Gary’s death. She has expanded this independent press's list to include international writers, photographers, and artists.

Susan has added poetry to her painting, drawing, and design repertoire in this issue of Pinyon Review 19 with an introductory poem entitled “Cured.” As I read the poem, I imagined the voice of my former editor (Gary) speaking to Susan: “She only heard/one message from the other side/he said, do not waste your joy/Sun on snow… Crows kept calling on the telephone wire/long after she had forgotten his number…” While reading author bios in this issue of Pinyon Review, I also discovered that Susan has been publishing poetry in Mudfish, Main Street Rag, and SAL. As I read, I envisioned Gary agreeing that she hasn’t “wasted her joy.”

In this hand-sewn edition, the poets Susan showcased  include renowned Luci Shaw, whose “Wishing Flower” is a poignant verse featuring a small child who observes “…dandelions proliferated enough/to cover the field with a tablecloth of gold/stars blowing in the wind…” Shaw, a long-time contributor to Pinyon, is Writer in Residence at Regent College, Vancouver, and received the 2013 Denise Levertov Award for Creative Writing.

I’ve had sporadic correspondence with the poet, Chuck Taylor, former Creative Writing Coordinator at Texas A&M who operates Free Slough Press. Chuck, also an accomplished photographer, contributed four lovely nature photographs, “Seeing More Than You See,” in this issue of Pinyon Review. He showcases his photographic work through shows in galleries, literary magazines, and on the web.

My dear friend, Karen Bourque, contributed a glass rendering of Ridges, my recent book of poetry and Don Thornton’s paintings published by Pinyon. The art piece features chenieres of Louisiana that publisher Susan describes as “vivid, visceral paintings.” Karen used stained glass, Apache tear, and kyanite to create her portrayal of the chenieres. It’s an arresting art piece that accompanies selected poems from Ridges, my book Susan will release in May.

Four haiku by Gary Hotham, a long-time contributor to Pinyon Publishing, will delight readers of “Dark Matters, ” a quartet about “early stars/fireflies changing/places.” Hotham is the Vice-President of the Haiku Society of America and has received several book awards for his haiku contributions.

As I said earlier, Pinyon #19 is a treasure created by Susan Entsminger, from the cover art and design of the High Country, Ouray Colorado to the last untitled poem by Simon Perchik “…in ashes, making room on the stove/in rest by a river/where there was none before.”

Limited Edition. Order through Pinyon Publishing, 23847 V66 Trail, Montrose, CO 81403

 

THE GREEN BIRD, ABSENTIA

 

I recorded a bit of bird watching in my last blog and have since seen even more birds of color: red, yellow, black, brown. Those sightings prompted memories of an elusive deep green bird I glimpsed after a few weeks of a two-year sojourn in Ahwaz, Iran. As a reminder of Iran, I substituted the drawing of a scene in Iran by New Iberia artist Georgia Dugan (now deceased) for the green bird.
 


I was still suffering from culture shock when I saw the beautiful green bird sitting in the desert near Marun, Iran, where I'd accompanied my husband when he worked on a water injection project in southern Iran. I hadn't photographed any Khuzestan scenes. However, I mentioned the green bird in a poem that the National Oil Company newspaper published. The poem attracted a visit from Hassan Hosseinipour, the company editor/poet who offered me a job writing for the Yaddasht Haftegy. I never saw the green bird again, and I'm sorry that I didn't photograph him. 
 


After seeing the bird, I asked my Dutch neighbor about him as she'd been an assistant veterinarian on the Isle of Cyprus. Maude Vroon had brought rice birds in her pocket via air when she moved to Iran and was an avid bird watcher. However, she just handed me a copy of Zien Is Kennen (Look to Know) to do my search for the green bird. The text and accompanying photo seemed to identify Groene Specht, a green woodpecker. This identification amazed me since trees were scant in Khuzestan, Iran.



The green woodpecker, a European species fond of ants, probably had been pecking in an old date orchard, the site of which had been decimated and became Melli Rah subdivision. In this company-owned residential area, we lived for two years. The bird uses the same nesting hole for ten years, and I reckon he hadn't changed residence in a decade. His main fare of ants may have eventually become termites, critters that caused us to move during the last few months of our two-year sojourn.
 


Later today, I plan to search for a children's animated series entitled Bagpuss, a woodpecker. A good friend often accuses me of romanticizing my sojourn in Iran. However, I do value the two-year experience I recorded in vignettes back in the '70s. In the introduction re-published in Iran: In A Persian Market, 2015, I often repeat the lament of Omar Khayyam, 11th-century Persian poet: "The glory is departed—Where? Where? Where?"
 


And the deep green bird remains vivid in my memories of Iran.

 

Drawing by Georgia Dugan (deceased).

A BIRD IN HAND

Bird Feeders at 65 Fairbanks Circle

 

When blogging becomes slogging because of a pain in the knee (that fragile connection between brain and leg!), daily activity slows down to bird watching from the sofa here in our Sewanee, TN retreat. It’s a meditative exercise, not unpleasant, but not very productive due to a strange malady known as a “torn meniscus” of the knee. This malady is usually caused by energetic, athletic activity, which is laughable in an on-the-brink of 86 year old, namely me. Only cortisone and the sight of birds calmed this blogger.

A full bird feeder is a yard attraction we acquired last year. So far, we’ve sighted cardinals, house finches, tufted titmice, flickers, chickadees, robins, nuthatches, goldfinches, towhees, and other feathered friends that have helped soothe an ailing knee with their acrobatic dives into the air beyond our big picture window in the living room. 

I am reminded of my essay in Their Adventurous Will about Caroline Dormon, a renowned Louisiana botanist whose love of birds inspired her lifelong bird watching near Briarwood, Louisiana. She often spoke of early bird watching in which she and her brother crawled out on limbs to peer in birds’ nests near her childhood home in Arcadia, Louisiana. After moving to Briarwood, she set up many feeding stations that she filled with chops for finches and cornbread for insect eaters! She also stuffed cornbread into flat rock crevices and made pencil snapshots of wrens, titmice, and nuthatches when they assumed different feeding attitudes. 

Miss Carrie’s chats in the Shreveport Times magazine led to her edition of Bird Talk, a favorite volume read by Louisiana naturalists during the 20th century. Many evenings at dusk for 50 years or more, Miss Carrie fed birds, hundreds of varieties that she said were as keen-minded as humans. She kept a display of birds’ nests on the back porch of her Briarwood cabin, and in tales of Apocrypha concerning her behavior, she recorded stories about birds plucking hair from her head to build birds’ nests. She also wore a large hat with nuts around the brim from which birds feasted.

“I wouldn’t think of living in a house so tightly closed that birds couldn’t fly in and out and squirrels frolic freely from outside to inside. That simply would not be living,” Miss Carrie related to her Louisiana author friend Lyle Saxon. 

I envision her sitting on my front porch (which faces the back yard) in the evenings, “keeping company with skunks and scorpions,” and “the kingdom come,” as a friend once said about this beloved botanist.

Photograph by Dr. Victoria I. Sullivan, a fellow Louisiana botanist

 

 

RIDGES

 

Cover of Ridges

On our arrival in Sewanee, TN, we found three boxes of Ridges, a volume of my poetry and Don Thornton’s paintings produced by Pinyon Publishing in Montrose, Colorado. Fortunately, Sister Madeleine Mary, CSM of the Sisters of St. Mary here in Sewanee, TN, had rescued and taken our books into our home on Fairbanks Circle during heavy rain, and all was saved. Since then, I’ve been sending out copies to a few regular readers that I hope will respond to my most-favored book. I sincerely appreciate Dr. Mary Ann Wilson’s salute to the “…blending of natural and human, art and place in a loving tribute to a fellow artist and friend, seeing in those ridges ‘the mudflats of old sufferings…”

The reference is to a volume of poetry and paintings designed by Susan Entsminger, publisher and editor of Pinyon Publishing, whose own artistic talent showcases the work of Don Thornton’s paintings and that which I consider my ultimate book of poetry. I had transported Don’s paintings from New Iberia, Louisiana to Sewanee a year ago where they sat in a box for months until I was able to overcome ennui caused by the threat of Covid disease hovering around everyone in the world. Perhaps the disease itself made me wonder if I’d ever feel like writing again. Only Don’s beautiful paintings could have challenged me to bring his art into book form. And after I sat with his work daily for several months, the Chenier Plain became my place of inspiration.

 

As botanist Dr. Victoria I. Sullivan explained in Ridges, the term chenier (or cheniere) derives from the Cajun word chene for oak. The Mississippi Chenier Plain is an ecological feature composed of coastal ridges 12-18 miles wide and 6-20 feet in elevation. The oak ridges stretch 124 miles from Sabine Pass, Texas, to Southwest Point, Louisiana. This plain is a rich mixture of wetlands, uplands, and open water that developed 7000 to 3000 years BP when water levels stood 16-20 feet lower than at present. Sea level rise between 3000 and 2500 BP submerged the cheniers to the extent we see them today.

The special foreword by Darrell Bourque, Louisiana Poet Laureate, 2007-2011, explains that in Ridges, “each poem takes an artist-poet-teacher to the crossroads of being, that sacred ridged place where Thornton lived most profoundly, most honestly, most deeply…” This morning I rejoice as I re-read Bourque’s foreword and take another long look at the “blue, blue skies, the rosy sand in the mud flats, the yellow he assigned to love, the brooding skies too, the impending storms, the golden, fuchsia, lavender and purple sunsets, each detail springboard for Moore to attach to a life, a marriage, a vocation, the sacred, the obstinate, the tortured, the mendicant, the explorer…”

I am proud of this book, of Don, of Suzi, his wife; of Vickie, who photographed the paintings, of Darrell and his grace-filled poetic introduction to the book; and of Susan, who realized the importance of making Ridges available to poets, biographers, and nature lovers. I hope that Ridges finds a prominent place in Louisiana history and culture as it found its precious place in my love of the Louisiana landscape through the eyes of master artist Don Thornton.

Here is “Blue Skies,” a poem and accompanying painting from Ridges:

 

 Blue Skies

That blue sky so close to the water,

a mirage of ridges behind,

was clear enough to banish bad spirits;

he could hear Ella Fitzgerald …

no, it was Willie Nelson …

singing “Blue Skies” that day.


The scattered frequency

moved his eyes into calmer light,

thoughts cleared of apparitions,

the mud flats of old sufferings,

and the wind, a mouth for Spirit,

created verse void of form within.

 

Oaks on the ridge swayed

while he drifted in the boat,

soon fell asleep

in the color of blue,

awakened to music dissolving,

      his soul spinning on a tuning fork.

Order books by emailing me at deaconwriter@gmail.com or snail mailing at PO Box 3124, Sewanee, TN 37375.