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. 

FOOTNOTE TO GINGER

Ginger Alive and Dreamy

A large response from readers of the Ginger blog caused me to give it better press than the photo of dead plant specimens in my yard that I published last week. This morning when I viewed a photograph of it alive and well that appears in An Ordinary Day, a book of my poetry, my melancholy mood lightened considerably.

Botanist Vickie Sullivan’s photograph of the plant when it was green and glowing gave me hope for the Ginger patches scattered about our yard. I know that New Iberia, Louisiana has a plethora of dead Ginger vegetation, and our yard tender tells me that we’re on a long list of customers clamoring for the removal of dead plants. So I look at the photograph Vickie took when our plants were at their best and wait for the drooping tan leaves to be cleared.

I know that after the dead leaves are removed, and by the time we return to New Iberia in the Fall, our Ginger patch will have resurrected and will look like the photo of this plant that makes New Iberia landscapes look luxurious and paradisaical. 

 

Photograph & Treatment by Victoria Sullivan  

 

 

WHAT WALTER INGLIS ANDERSON INSPIRED

When more gloom than sun surrounds Teche country, rain falling daily and cold following, I am grateful for the art on the walls of my house, especially the prints of Walter Anderson’s work. This Mississippi artist who suffered from mental illness but who did not let this illness stay his hand from drawing and painting was a humble man who had a reverence for nature and knew that painting, drawing, creating block prints, sculptures, poetry — was not about competition: it was about Art. As he wrote, “his object in being was realization — to realize everything from the smallest object in nature to the most casual acquaintance…”

For several years, my friend Dr. Victoria Sullivan and I traveled to Ocean Springs, Mississippi to research books and articles and to explore Anderson’s habitats. We also visited the Walter Anderson Museum of Art so many times, we could have become docents for this wonderful place. We were preparing for an article Vickie would write about the botany in his work, and I to compose a poem — both scheduled to appear in Interdisciplinary Humanities, a publication sponsored by the National Association for Humanities Education. The entire journal was devoted to Walter Anderson, and the editor, Lisa Graley, a professor at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, declared that “never before have we worked with a group of authors from such diverse backgrounds who were so enthusiastic about one singular subject…" She also wrote that “through the efforts of Anderson’s mother, he was brought up in an environment where the creation of art was a way — not just of life but of living…”

Vickie’s article, “Plant Life ‘Realizations’ in the Murals of Walter Anderson” covered 12 pages, while my poem, “On First Looking into Anderson’s Refuge,” was spread across two. Vickie studied, in depth, lines and forms which Anderson used to depict flora and fauna —trees; e.g., slash pines, which Anderson had captured in a linoleum block print, Chinese tallows (shaped like a woman’s head and shoulders) in another linoleum block print, and wrote extensive, elegant descriptions about the murals from Walter Anderson’s Shearwater Cottage, describing colors and forms of plants; e.g. pipeworts and Yellow Flowered Pitcher Plants, Wood Lily and pink Morning Glory flowers. She also described Sweet Gum and Red Oak trees, and flowering Dogwoods that Anderson painted in the murals for the Community Center in Ocean Springs (another place we frequented during our explorations). She included Anderson’s own writings about his activities from his journals, especially the Horn Island accounts. 

“I live and have my being in a world of Shape and Color,” the artist wrote about his work accomplished during sojourns on Horn Island where he studied plant and animal life. Vickie expressed her admiration for him in a concluding thought that “his spiritual thoughts had moved from turbulent (referring to his mental condition) to recognition of a mystical element within himself. The mystical sense from which he painted interprets nature’s manifesting light.” 

My own poem published in the Interdisciplinary Humanities contained four verses, the second and fourth of which appear here:

II.

He stopped caring for humans,

they were abstractions, pure forms

to people his myths, fantasy props

drawn in hooks and curves,

an ancient language,

signs and symbols, pictographs,

lines trapping the emergency of moment,

claiming history, organic and watchful;

he did all of this wearing a crumpled felt hat,

managing to tip it in gentlemanly gesture

to unknown women

(for whom he had no desire),

to unknown men

(who offered no campfire camaraderie),

alone in a pure world

whose tragedy was a dead animal,

calamity, a hard storm;

he, the eye of God piercing cloud banks

over an island beckoning shipwrecks,

the hand of God poised over unblemished page,

following shorebirds…”

IV. 

At the cottage, a disheveled figure,

he fell asleep in thickest night,’

left hand on the page of fantasy,

right hand clutching pen

after sketching a fairy tale,

re-designing legends,

he lived there too,

bringing whimsey to vague parchment,

using both hands,

scratching literature into visuals,

words unfolding, then folding outward,

transposed into another art.

These excerpts are only the tip of the iceberg in the story about Walter Anderson but I know that The Interdisciplinary Journal containing essays, poems, memories about him was Lisa’s hope for readers to visit the museum and see Anderson’s stunning murals. I think of those warm, eventful days we spent exploring the world of this brilliant artist, and each time I sit at the breakfast table and look up at a print of his“Walls of Light,” some of the gloom of these winter days dissipates. 

RESURRECTION FERN

Resurrection Fern on tree along Jump Off
Mountain Rd., Sewanee, TN

In the spring before Easter resurrection, the old live oaks in New Iberia, Louisiana begin to show large clumps of fronds unfurling that become green and show signs of new life – the resurrection fern, an epiphyte fern that clings to its host tree branches, comes to life, and to me, it is symbolic of the resurrection of Christ. During dry, winter periods this epiphyte fern becomes a grayish brown and looks as if it has shriveled up and died. However, the plant can lose up to 97 percent of its water content and stay alive. A few rain showers lately have caused the fern to unfurl and transform into the bright green that forms on our old oaks. Some plant experts say that the fern can stay in a dried-out state for 100 years. 

In 2014 when I was writing Between Plants and People, a volume of poetry about the interrelationships between people and the plants around us, I asked Dr. Victoria I. Sullivan, a botanist, to take photographs of the plants I wrote about for the book. At the time, I was spending my half year on The Mountain in Sewanee, Tennessee, and Sewanee was experiencing a gracious plenty of dry weather. When I decided to include a poem about resurrection fern, we searched every habitat on The Mountain and couldn’t find a “model” for the poem. We finally decided to drive some distance to Savannah, Georgia to find this fern that reproduces by spores, not seeds. We knew that Savannah has a plethora of old oaks — also, we were often known for suddenly deciding to embark on a trip just to recover a detail for our writings, or to satisfy a yen for peaches or apples… we were called to live up to our rep for uncovering serendipity on such trips. 

Resurrection Fern on Live Oak, Savannah, GA

We walked through the streets of Savannah and finally found a dried up specimen on a venerable oak in the parking lot of a legal firm where we were chased out by a guard but not before we had taken a few quick snapshots. We then drove back to Sewanee. The trip clocked out as a twelve-hour round trip, and when we had recovered, we were told that a patch of the fern grew on a tree not more than five miles away from Sewanee! It was bright with green life, and the intrepid botanist took a photo. Both the green specimen of the fern at Sewanee and the un-resurrected fern in Savannah appear on a page of Between Plants and People. 

Resurrection fern doesn’t steal water or nutrients from the old oaks and cypress on which it most often appears, and it has the distinction of having been taken into outer space aboard the Discovery space shuttle so that space travelers aboard could observe this plant at zero gravity. The fern was able to effect resurrection even without gravity and was named the “first fern in space.” 

The resurrection fern is an amazing plant, and when spring rains begin to fall, or at Eastertide, you might want to look upward at topmost tree branches of our ancient oaks to witness an awe-inspiring resurrection. This member of the plant world has withstood many droughts and seeming-deaths but remains alive and healthy. I’d say there’s a message therein! 

Photography by Dr. Victoria I. Sullivan

CHENIERES, BEACH RIDGES

Cheniere by Don Thornton

I have many pieces of art by regional artists in my home, and among my favorites is a small painting of a cheniere by the deceased artist/sculptor Don Thornton of New Iberia. Don gifted me with the painting years ago after I'd written several articles about him for regional publications. He did a series of paintings of the Louisiana Cheniere Plain which extends from Sabine Lake to Vermilion Bay along the Gulf Coast, and my prized painting is #64 in this series. I was drawn to the painting a few days ago when a heavy storm forced me to stay indoors and enjoy my book and art collections.

I became familiar with chenieres almost forty years ago when I joined a group of four females who set out one humid summer day to find Cheniere au Tigre in Vermilion Parish, Louisiana. We embarked from Intracoastal City in a speedboat piloted by Dr. Victoria I. Sullivan, a biologist at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette who was armed with a pile of maps by which she attempted to guide us.  Although I'm not sure we found this famous site that was advertised as a summer resort in the early 20th century and which offered tourists room and board for $1.50 per night at that time, but we did hike through a wood of old live oaks that topped the sandy ridges of the Cheniere Plain. A Cheniere Plain consists of a beach ridge separated by marsh and swamp vegetation, and is often wooded; in fact, the word is derived from the French word, "chene," which means "oak" to designate the ancient oaks growing on the ridges.

Explorer, Cheniere au Tigre

Several books have been written about Cheniere Caminada, a cheniere adjacent to New Orleans that was destroyed by a hurricane in 1893. This cheniere was settled by the Chitimacha Indians, and because of the oak grove at the tip of the peninsula, it was called an island. Early settlers of the cheniere included Lafitte's privateers, among whom was an Italian named Vincent Gambi who raided any vessel he sighted in the Gulf. Descriptions of his exploits and of the famous hurricane are recorded in a volume entitled Cheniere Caminada, Buried at Sea, by Dale P. Rogers. It's an account of the tidal wave and hurricane that killed 2000 people living on the island in 1893 and includes photographs, maps, and drawings depicting the disaster. Some of the remains of buildings the hurricane did not totally destroy were salvaged and reused, one of which is the Curole home later occupied by the descendants of the Curoles in Cut Off, Louisiana.

Chenieres appear in my young adult book, The Kajun Kween and also in a book of poetry entitled Old Ridges. The photograph on the cover of the latter, by Dr. Victoria I. Sullivan, is among my favorite photos of Louisiana, and if readers look carefully at the bayou pictured, they may sight an alligator snoozing on the bank.

The following verse is extracted from the poem, "Old Ridges," which is the lead poem of Old Ridges and alludes to the famous Cheniere au Tigre trip that four adventurous females took too many years ago:

"...Hackberry trees grew among stands of oaks
and in the center of one grove,
a house of silvered cypress,
torn screen on the sagging porch,
door ajar, as if someone had just departed,
the abandoned house among trees
buffeted and twisted by Gulf winds.

Like the trees, it seemed to say
I haven't forgotten how it is
to die before dying,
consider my age,
consider this shade,
no voice, no sound...
and a tiger lurks over the ridge."

A LAKE WALK

Tangle of Yellow Floating Heart leaves
at Lake Cheston, Sewanee, TN

I wish that I had a dollar for every walk I've been on that involved a hunt for plants. My friend, Victoria, a botanist who is world-renowned for her work with Eupatorium, a white flowered weed that has no utilitarian value in the human world (that I know of), often asks me to accompany her on ventures into places that are close to nature's heart and, sometimes, places that bear the signage: "Posted, No Trespassing."

Yesterday, the plant hunt centered around bodies of water near Sewanee, Tennessee that are called lakes. I use the word "called" because to me, the ones I saw were more like ponds. I understand that there is a lot of uncertainty about what should properly be called a lake, and some simply define them as larger versions of ponds, or as bodies of water that are at least five acres or more in area; while others define them as twelve to twenty acres in area. I've read that in the state of Wisconsin almost every pond is called a lake; whereas in Newfoundland, every lake is called a pond.

Whatever the ecologists say about the appropriate definitions of lakes and ponds, we walked the perimeter of Lake Cheston on Wiggons Creek yesterday, and I think that we must have covered close to two miles, sometimes walking over rough terrain where matted tree roots made the going difficult for an aging tenderfoot like me.

We were trying to collect a water plant called the Yellow Floating Heart (Nymphoides peltata), a yellow-flowered species of plant that somehow got here from its native Eurasian habitat, was established in Quebec, and now occurs from New England southwest to Texas. We could not get close enough to the water to pluck a specimen so we stood on a bridge, attempting to "catch" a specimen with a long stick we had found on the trail. The floating heart-shaped leaves, with long petioles, grow so thickly that they form a network almost impossible to disturb with a stick. After numerous attempts, the botanist said, "I'm going in," and I shuddered because the ground around the lake's edge looked mushy enough to absorb a human up to the knees.

As this particular botanist has been touted as someone who walks on water, often wading in marshes around south Louisiana to demonstrate to students how a plant can be captured in boggy areas, I was surprised when she turned back and decided that the Yellow Floating Heart wasn't worth the effort.

Beached Yellow Floating Heart

We continued to walk the perimeter and as we neared the beach area, I spied more of this water lily-like plant. However, again, we were too far from the plant, and, again, the botanist gave up the catch, sighing heavily. As we turned to climb the hill where the car was parked, I looked down at the grass just beyond the lake's edge and at my feet lay a perfect specimen of the plant, its yellow face smiling up at me. "Eureka!" I said.  "A floating heart. It followed us." I felt like I had found a Swamp Candle in a south Louisiana swamp or a wildflower in the crack of a city sidewalk!

Readers may think that such finds are not so momentous, but I am proud to write that I've finally attained the title of "Amateur Botanist," with a specialization in the field of Yellow Floating Hearts.

Photographs by Victoria I. Sullivan