A PRIMITIVE FLOWER?

Five million years ago, the beautiful Japanese Magnolia took its place among the ancient tree species of southwest China; however, the first trees sent to America were from Japan. Our resident botanist, Dr. Victoria Sullivan, says Japanese Magnolia are "primitive flowers." According to Apocrypha, if the tree blooms out of season, you might be harboring anxiety in your home. Perhaps, but I think these trees are just signaling an early seasonal shift—it's called "spring."

The lovely purple blossoms that appear on the trees around New Iberia, Louisiana, could be a variety known as Jane Japanese Magnolia. Still, I'm not a horticulturist or botanist, and to me, they're just blooms that not only enhance the Cajun landscape, they also carry a delicious fragrance I enjoy while sweeping the backyard patio. Some of these Japanese Magnolia blooms can grow up to 12 inches across, and the petals form a shape like a goblet or Communion cup, so I own a tree of sacred vessels.

Fortunately, my Japanese Magnolia was planted behind my home because this location symbolizes that it's in the right place to bring financial security. But I'm warned not to sleep under a blooming Japanese Magnolia tree, or the fragrance would kill me. And what a way to go!

I'm supposed to be on the lookout for Japanese beetles, slugs, and leaf miners, but the weather has been too cold for me to do daily inspections, and I'm assuming that the cool temps have deterred their proliferation. Some garden enthusiasts prune their Japanese Magnolia trees after they flower, but renegade gardener that I am, I allow it to have its way in the backyard. So far, it has been a "long laster," blooming during its appointed season since the late 1970s.

I don't know if the new fence we built (to ward off the hounds that were slipping through a wire fence into our backyard) has bothered our long-growing magnolia beauty. Still, so far, nothing has deterred the blooming of this spectacular flower. It's taller than the fence and thumbs its nose at the barking dogs beneath.

P.S. In a few weeks, I'll get to see another spectacular spring display in my backyard at Sewanee, Tennessee—yellow and white daffodils. As Basho writes: "How I long to see/among the morning flowers/the face of God."

 

Photograph by Victoria Sullivan

 

 

SPRINGING FORWARD

We always leave New Iberia, Louisiana in the spring when Teche country is at its most lush. Sunday morning, we're bound for The Mountain in Sewanee, Tennessee where the weather forecasters report that there'll be several nights in the low 20's yet to come. I look out at the Japanese magnolia putting out deep lavender blooms and wish that I could take the entire tree with me. A few days ago I featured this lovely tree in the last poem of a new book I've written entitled Departures. Departures is a book I hadn't planned to write this winter while still in south Louisiana but was inspired to complete through corresponding with Darrell Bourque, former Louisiana poet laureate who's working on a new chapbook about a famous Cajun country musician.

Darrell has inspired and influenced my writing since the day I walked into a Creative Writing class at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette twenty-five years ago. He has a generous spirit and always finds something "precious" in the expressions of poets he mentors, and when he critiques your work, you find that the gentle shifts he suggests for certain lines of the poems only make you feel as though you're discovering how to develop the confidence needed to help you spring forward.

Several months ago, Darrell gifted me with the one book of his poetry that I didn't have on my shelves, an earlier work entitled Burnt Water Suite, published in 1999. To me, this book shows the full range of his poetic abilities and honors his appreciation for places further afield than his native south Louisiana—Sarajevo, Russia, France...I'm always impressed by Darrell's cosmopolitan views. He knows as much about music, art, and philosophy as he does about poetry—a visit to his home in Churchpoint, Louisiana is like a tour of an art gallery, and he says modestly that had he not become a poet, he'd have taught art history. He also speaks with easy familiarity about Bach and Mozart, and about the music compositions of Olivier Messiaen and Arvo Part, two composers I had to research when he mentioned them to me!

In the endnotes to Burnt Water Suite, Darrell explains that the "burnt water" in his title is: 

"a reference to the opposition that engenders all creation and to the created thing itself. It is at once both the phenomenal and the pervasive Urge that creates all being. It is then flower, sex, poem, person as well as the necessitating force or desire that resides in all matter...cities and civilizations are founded on an image: the union of opposites, water and fire, and was the metaphor for the foundation of the city of Mexico..." 

This is a difficult passage, perhaps, but it explains the metaphysical inclinations of Darrell's work.

I've always loved Darrell's "odes" to his mother, and in "My Mother's Foot," he is at his lyrical best, particularly in the lines: 

"I am trying to say beloved/I am trying to keep the baskets from spilling... I am calling blessed the arc of blood/I am saying this story is not about to end." 

Readers may be moved to say, "And I hope your stories never end," for these elegies are as transporting as the sacred music he appreciates.

Darrell once dubbed me a metaphysician, but he's the poet whose metaphysical gifts are represented in "Night Prayer On Returning from Tuscany:" 

"O sweet little room flanked by others/ just like it where my friends lie/like elder monks drifting to another world/on day thoughts/-the problems and the progress of the acolytes, /-the weeds in the herb garden, /...where next year's lavender seeds will come from..."

I read this praiseworthy book again and again, and it speaks to my condition, as the Quakers say. Darrell's communications to fellow poets and sharing of his work are salutes to the spirit of art and play impulse within all of us. He's a writer who knows every word matters when you engage with other poets and writers...and what you say to the world should be true but uplifting. This outstanding south Louisiana poet is one of the major personas I will miss as I move forward to another sojourn on The Mountain.

FIRST SIGNS OF SPRING

A sight that inspires us to believe “if winter comes, spring can’t be far behind” is that of a Japanese magnolia tree in bloom. Here in the South, the blossoms signal the end of winter and hint at an early spring. The blooming tree also tells us that azalea, dogwood, and redbud blooms aren’t far behind.

A tree touted to be the oldest tree known to man – 50 million years old – the Japanese magnolia was introduced to English speaking countries by the Japanese, but it’s actually native to southwest China. The beautiful tree has large, tulip-shaped, purple, pink, and sometimes white flowers that need feeding in late winter. (My backyard tree must have starved at some time or another, or was killed off by frost because it is sans blooms; however, others in the neighborhood are heavy with blossoms).

Some varieties of the Japanese Magnolia, like Verbanica, with its light purple blooms, show good frost tolerance during the time of blooming. The tree loves early morning because at that time the sun’s beams aren’t as strong as those during the afternoon, and the goblet-shaped blooms almost seem to be cupping the soft light to greet the day.

I’ve searched through many plant books and journals, looking for information about how the Japanese magnolia trees got across the pond and introduced into our yards and gardens but haven’t turned up any data yet. I’ve even searched through Haiku poetry volumes, hoping to find an appropriate Haiku about the fragrant, stunning blooms of this tree and find numerous mentions about the plum tree, but no reference to the lavender/purple blooms of the tree that we call Japanese or Saucer magnolia.

Japanese magnolia trees thrive in semi-tropical climates like our Louisiana clime, and we start sending for seed catalogs or moving toward garden centers when we first see the blossoms in late January and early February. On these gray winter days, the trees make a lovely contrast to a lead-colored sky, and I can’t imagine the Chinese or Japanese poets missing an opportunity to write Haiku about these spectacular trees. Actually, I’m inclined to include a Haiku poem in this blog, written by the Japanese poet, Bundo, who does a brushstroke description of the plum tree in Haiku, Seasons of Japanese Poetry edited by Johanna Brownell. Brownell says that the Japanese are riveted by the purity and beauty of nature and have historically expressed this in their Haiku, “through a subtle sense of emotionalism that avoids abstract reasoning and human valorization…”

Most Haiku focuses on a landscape or scene that can be interpreted in many ways, so this Haiku poem by Bundo could be attributed to our southern Japanese magnolia: “A heavy cloud hangs low – /a cloud of blossoms o’er the land, /Pink, like the sunrise glow.” (In my lexicon of definitions, I often refer to this kind of poetry as “snippets”).

P.S. If you have a digestive problem, the bark of the Japanese magnolia tree has been used to treat this malady. My own treatment for a case of dyspepsia: stand and look at a Japanese magnolia tree in bloom for thirty minutes daily.

Photographs by Victoria I. Sullivan