SPRING’S KISS

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

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

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

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

ESPRIT DE FEMME

This morning, the fog on The Mountain blanketed trees, homes, and roads with an impenetrable curtain that could have caused feelings of morning gloom at Sewanee, Tennessee. However, when I went into the dining room for breakfast, I looked up at the windows facing our backyard and saw the latest glasswork of Karen Bourque that I brought back with me last week. A piece of purple colored glass with a hawk winging its way in the background cut through the somber world outside, and I decided to unveil this piece before it appears on the cover of my latest book, Above the Prairie, forthcoming through Border Press in June. There's no other word for Karen's new work — it's stunning!

Karen and I've been working together on covers for my books of poetry during the last decade, and have the kind of synchronicity that births an almost instant process: Border Press publisher, Vickie Sullivan, and I meet for lunch with Karen and her husband, Darrell Bourque, former Louisiana poet laureate, and before we fill our plates, I perceive an idea for a book of poetry, along with the title — presto. I tell Karen about the idea, sometimes sending her a photograph or the first poem, and before I can produce a dozen poems, she has begun work on one of her beautiful pieces. In today's slang about synchronicity, she "gets it."

In another life, Karen was a lab technologist, a working mother, and wife, but when she retired, she began to dedicate her talents to glasswork, and her pieces have appeared in churches, spiritual centers, the Ernest Gaines Center at the University of Louisiana in Lafayette, at the Louisiana Book Festival, and other cultural institutions and homes throughout Acadiana. She never advertises her work because the word is out about her brilliant talent. As soon as she completes a commission, and even before she completes a glass piece, someone else is at the door to her studio, seeking her artwork.

I know that my book isn't published yet, but this morning when I looked up at the soaring hawk above the Louisiana prairie in prisms of glass, my spirit lifted, and I was compelled to share this stunning glass piece with readers. I'm always as excited about my book covers as I am about the poetry within and hope you'll look for what's coming next...

P.S. At the risk of sounding like a Grandmother braggart: After Karen produces a photo of the glass piece, it is sent to Martin Romero, my grandson in Louisiana, who makes a handsome design around the glass piece for the cover.

FACES OF INNOCENTS

Great Grandmother Diane with
Lilian

In my lexicon, If one picture is worth a thousand words, pictures of children are worth tens of thousands of words. At a birthday party for my six-year-old great-grandson Alex this past weekend, we were able to record the faces of my three great-grandchildren and took endless shots of them, not just to commemorate the occasion but to make those little faces available to me when I return to Sewanee, Tennessee next month.

Alex the party boy

On days when fog hangs over the day and gray feelings reflect the weather, I bring up photographs of Alex, Kate, and Lillian (the twins) and am uplifted. After making several road trips this past week, today I almost succumbed to gray, weary feelings, but I brought up the photos on my cell phone and was grateful that when I looked at those innocent faces I felt hopeful. I was also grateful for the devotion of the children's grandmothers because the Romero offspring are fortunate to have grandmothers who travel from southeastern and southwestern Louisiana to provide loving, extended family almost every other week, an experience my daughters hardly ever enjoyed.

I said that pictures of children are worth tens of thousands of words, so here are the photos that

Daddy Martin with Kate

should evoke a smile or two from readers...or are they just products of inordinate great-grandmotherly pride?  A footnote to the photos: The twins are on the cusp of becoming one-year-old. Lillian walks and Kate talks, and if you stand outside the door of their nursery, you can hear them talking to one another in twin language. Their favorite subject: When are we going to eat? I thought I interpreted a question Lillian asked Kate this weekend: Who's that old lady with white hair that keeps reciting nursery rhymes to us? 

 

FLORIDA FISHING

Grandson Martin, Jacob,
and Vickie (l. to r.)

While visiting in the home of Vickie Sullivan's 97-year old mother in central Florida recently, Vickie's sister came over with two old photographs of me and my grandson Martin in hand. The photos probably dated back to 33 years ago, and one photo showed me holding a large bass I had caught; the other photograph showed my grandson Martin, Mary Ruth's oldest son Jacob, and Vickie holding a nice string of fish they had caught in canals on the Latt Maxcy Corporation Ranch. I couldn't believe that the large bass I held was my catch of the day, but there I was, wearing large-frame glasses popular back in the day, smiling over the fish that was stretched to full length in a snapshot that Mary Ruth had discovered among her memorabilia.

Fishing was once among my favorite recreations, and I felt a jolt about my aging process when I looked at the photo. My blissful expression and that of my grandson in the photographs also jolted me into a consciousness of how recent photos of me show a lot of white hair and a certain worried look on my face. I was in my forties when we made this fishing jaunt, and I was enchanted with the landscape of central Florida — the grassy pastureland savannas with scattered clumps of saw palmetto, hammocks of live oaks trailing moss, and orange groves scattered among many glistening lakes. My nostalgia and memories of the past make it a happy time among hospitable people.

Me with bass

At the time of the photo-taking, an abundance of bass, bream, and catfish filled the canals on the ranch with overflowing high water from the nearby Kissimmee River. Every cast that day had brought in a fish; however, I never returned to this bountiful fishing spot and later confined my fishing to casts from a pier that Vickie's mother built on the beach of her lakefront home. For a long spell, she fed the fish in Silver Lake daily, and on one occasion, I caught 23 bream, ceasing my fishing only when dusk came... and I began to think about having to clean the catch!

In my forthcoming book of poetry, Sifting Red Dirt (see cover below), I included a prose poem about fishing expeditions entitled Big Creek:

They called it “floating the river,” one paddling, the other casting his way into eddies all day, pulling close to shadowy pools, perch beds where blue gills and sun perch darted for multi-colored flies thrown into their hunger. One summer, they allowed me along, and I was given a fly rod and shown how to crack the whip, two flies attached. When I felt the hard pull of two blue gills, plump, dark blue bodies tugging at the lures and breaking the surface of the water I knew why they went out on the river. Most days the sun was so hot they had to come to a hiatus under overhanging oaks every few hours to open a can of beer and say a few words to each other, but the less words, the better, the overwhelming silence a relief from talk required for the unending necessity of hands at work, making a living. The Bogue Chitto, Choctaw for “Big Creek,” was then clear water, and when we stopped under the bridge by The Tavern to replenish the beer, I could see the gravel bottom of the river, breathe in the desultory air, feel a part of that silence that had been broken only by the whiz of the line and a small snap as the line hit the water. They were both on their way to becoming alcoholics, and floating the river soon became something less spiritual, less recreation, and more drinking in the shade of the watchful oaks. I knew the only peace either of them felt was on that river, and I did not go with them often but when I did, I wasn’t afraid, even in sudden summer thunderstorms when we had to pull up on the banks and sit until the white flashes and rumbling stopped. I was only afraid of water moccasins dropping into the boat, preferring to be at the outer edges of the perch pools. Sometimes when the sun became unbearable, the paddler would start the motor of an old outboard and stir the heavy air, riding the current for a few minutes, the breeze pushing us on to another pool. Years later, I would understand the meditative quality of those trips, no thoughts persisting, just concentration on the line flying into the dark pools searching for hungry perch, a hypnotic gesture, not caring what anyone thought, not wanting to hear anyone else’s problems, not moaning about life not being intact, but feeling the soul’s bliss, heart contracting with joy in the simple goodness of floating the river. 

A LONELY GRANDMOTHER

By the time I get ready to travel to Sewanee, Tennessee this week-end, I hope that the Louisiana monsoons will have abated and won't follow me, and that all will be dry on The Mountain at my arrival. And by the time I've settled into my Sewanee retreat, A Lonely Grandmother, my latest book of poetry, should have made its debut with Border Press Books. It's No. 40 among my book publications, not counting one lost manuscript of a novel that was put away in an attic and the rats must have consumed (it was my raciest endeavor, so...). The new book of poetry will probably be on the market before my 80th birthday in May.

I told a good friend that A Lonely Grandmother has experienced so many birth problems, Grandmother has probably grown lonelier than ever, waiting for her debut. But she's about to emerge, and straight from the publisher's blurb: "A Lonely Grandmother emphasizes that no matter the period in human history, grandmothers have always been important, cherished women in the family constellation. In this volume of poetry, a maternal grandmother calls the poet's family 'a tempest in a teapot,' but is only showing concern for her grandchildren's dysfunctional upbringing. A stern but forgiving figure in the poet's early life, Grandmother Nell comes to realize that "the children grown/Absolutes will not keep her company."

This is a poetic tribute to a grandparent that spans a family history from the poet's childhood to adulthood and ends with a meditative prose piece that serves as closure: "She closed the heavy door behind me. When I reached the sidewalk, I looked up at the cupola on the roof of the old house. A phantom flew out of the window beneath it and disappeared in the sky."

The beautiful cover of A Lonely Grandmother, which depicts the cupola on my deceased Grandmother Nell's Victorian home in Franklinton, Louisiana, is Vickie Sullivan's photograph of a glass piece conceived and rendered by Karen Bourque, an exquisite glass artist from Churchpoint, Louisiana. Cover design is by grandson Martin Romero, who is a landscape architect practicing in New Orleans, Louisiana. Martin is also an accomplished graphic artist.

A Lonely Grandmother is now available online at amazon.com, or from Border Press, PO Box 3124, Sewanee, TN 37375 for $15 plus $4 shipping and handling.

NIGHT OFFICES

Straight from the blurb written by Border Press regarding my newest book of poetry available on amazon.com in a few weeks:

"If you've ever suffered from insomnia or if you're a person who composes nocturnes of any kind during the night hours, Diane Marquart Moore's Night Offices, her nineteenth book of poetry, will "speak to your condition." Moore explores the uses of and the cures for insomnia, famous characters who have suffered from this malady; e.g., W.C. Fields, Groucho Marx, and Thomas Edison. With characteristic wit and irony, she records the sleeplessness of various family members and friends, including her own propensity to recite the night offices, writing that "in four vigils of the night you wake/with desolation for a pillow./Phantom crucifixions hover--/monsters that pull/your soul from sleep,/peer over the edge of a ceiling fan..." She confesses that no matter where she closes her eyes, "a lightship lowers its anchor in the room."

Paul Marquart, my brother in northern California, rendered the painting for the cover design of Night Offices, and Martin Romero, my grandson, designed the front and back covers.

A sample of the poetry in Night Offices entitled "Opus Dei:"

Sister Elizabeth's slippers,

the feet of prayer,

hurry along sacred corridors

bringing vials of care

between the aisles

of Compline and Lauds,

reciting the night Vigils,

her arms encircling

Sister Lucy, Sister Mary Zita

whose needs demand

God's love and mercy

each hour of the night

against the threatening void,

their souls suspended,

as a saint with callused feet

lights the lamp

for His arrival.

Thanks again to Border Press for launching Night Offices. I might add that another book of poetry, which will contain poems about humanistic botany and photographs of plant life taken by botanist Victoria Sullivan, is in the writing stages. It's entitled Between Plants and People. Most collections of my poetry are listed on amazon.com and on the borderpressbooks.com site. Thanks for reading!