IN PASSING

During the services at St. Mary's Convent, Sewanee, yesterday, I was happy to hear the priest talk about The Arts as a way to connect with God, expanding that notion to include the art of poetry. I felt like adding to her remarks those made by Urban T. Holmes who said that when Anglicanism is at its best, its liturgy, its poetry, its music and its life can create a world of wonder in which it is very easy to fall in love with God. The presiding priest at St. Mary's also said that reading poetry and listening to music could inspire the same spiritual connection. So, following services, I went home and opened a book of poetry entitled In Passing by John Miller that I had received in the mail when I returned from our visit to Louisiana.

In Passing, Pinyon Publishing's newest publication, covers the lifework of Miller who has published poetry in a variety of journals, two full-length collections and several chapbooks. Many of these publications are compiled in this compelling collection of musings about love, survival, grief, history, and mortality, and Miller expresses his insights in a clear, definitive voice.

Miller's poems are highly accessible, and he's at his best in a section devoted to his father and their relationship entitled "Time and Time Again." I was moved by the intense current of ideas in "Where We'd Caught The Big Ones," as the poet follows his aging father on a fishing trip in Hawai'i "down to jagged lava, the promise/off its jut..." and the poignancy of the lines that expose the old man's vulnerability and the poet's desire to help him: "Balancing our way/over rough stone, uphill, toward the road,/I want to take his hand, offer/to carry all our gear, but do neither,/granting him his own slow pace..." This exact memory of a stark moment in the poet's life conveys the pain of observing mortality and will not fail to move readers with its expression of anguish.

The gem in In Passing is a poem entitled "Emily Dickinson," formerly published in The Southern Review, and a full excerpt of the second section in the poem will titillate devoted readers of the bard of Amherst whose poetry gained immortality in collections published after her death: "A burning bush, a blaze of light:/if such intensities thus spoke His will, /what was her worship as she waited/rapt by the stealthy glow aslant those hills/of frozen Amherst? When light faded, /when trance deepened to shadow in its dumb/unciphered pause, it was she who paid/absence its due and saw its kingdom come..." The emotional poise and power in this poem expresses a truth told in unmistakable clarity and is infused with deep personal radiance. I call it one of those "great poems."

A poem entitled "At Eventide" reminds me of Julian of Norwich's observation that we experience spiritual moments in our lifetime through both consolation and desolation. Miller creates an arresting picture of a woman in a Tampa Bay retirement home watching every evening from a fifth floor window for a man on the beach "...hunting shells or meditating/or both, she can never tell..." The appearance of the man and the moments of his activity in her inactive life seem to comfort her, and when he disappears into the darkness, she reflects: "...She sees beyond, a pyramid of lights/mirrored in the offshore calm. /A cruise ship anchored. There must be/voices, laughter, dance music, karaoke/on board, drowned for her by distance/and the ceaseless swell, /the curl and crash of waves into the night." This poem also reminds me of W.H. Auden's "Musee de Beaux Arts," his poem about suffering in which he writes: "...The expensive delicate ship that must have seen/Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, / Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on..."

Publisher Gary Entminger touts that Miller's poems are easy to read quickly but they contain the depth to encourage readers to return for second readings. His remarks are on the mark—I read the volume in one sitting; however, this morning while listening to Perahia play and direct Mozart's piano concertos, I returned to them again and discovered deeper meaning and resilience in Miller's writings. Here is an original poet whose wisdom is strongly apparent throughout In Passing, but readers won't just read this collection "in passing!"

John Miller grew up in Hawai'i and earned his graduate degrees from Stanford University. He retired from Denison University and lives with his wife Ilse in a retirement community in Lexington, Virginia.

Order In Passing from Pinyon-Publishing, 23847 V 66 Trail, Montrose, CO 81403

WIRES OVER THE HOMEPLACE

If the arresting title of Pinyon Publishing’s latest poetry publication, Wires Over the Homeplace by Paul Dickey, doesn’t attract readers, the sharp black and red cover painting entitled “Bold Painting” by Ira Haber will certainly entice poetry lovers to look within. However, readers don’t have to read far for their interest to be captured by poems of energy and variety that introduce a poet who writes at the center of things.

Paul Dickey crosses the boundaries of space and time in the opening section of Wires Over the Homeplace, entitled “Frontier Ancestors,” in the poem by that name, “bearing the full baggage of history, stowing the ancient instruments/that no more predict the future” and moving on to “where the rivers part…” in a late 18^th century Pennsylvania frontier, then across the U.S. into the postmodern era. He transports readers into harsh places of the Midwest--at a public auction of the revered family farm and to a scene where “plump and skinny wives crow of granddaughters with money and day jobs in Milwaukee…” reaching out to every generation with his wry style conceived in democratic introspection.

My favorite section, entitled “A Knack to Losing Things,” shows Dickey’s ability to execute a bit of partner poetry in which he dialogues with the deceased American poet Elizabeth Bishop, author of “One Art.” He links himself with Bishop’s lines about significant personal losses with his own lines “What had been lost along the casual way/will not come back to me another day,/and to be frank, it often will not do/to keep a useful thing its use past due…” This “union in identity” carried out by many poets has been explicated in David Lehmann’s preface to The Best of American Poetry, 25^th Edition, in which Lehmann explains how poets often “take note of an ancestor, ally, or rival” and begin a dialogue with a deceased poet about a mutually-inspired subject.

Dickey’s philosophical inclination exerts itself in many of the poems included in “The Knack of Losing Things” section; e.g., his “A Thief We Barely Noticed,” a poem with succinct lines about the inevitable journey toward life’s end, penned in metaphors that speak of ordinary household events: “A thief is living with us/tearing threads of wallpaper, pulling threads from the carpet./Every night it is the same./Footprints wear the linoleum./Luster is stolen from the silverware…”

In the section “We Never Know,” Dickey confronts aging, writing poems that are so poignant they cannot be dismissed by those who have reached the evening of their lives; e.g., “A Retiree Ponders His Day,” in which Dickey ponders his “morning of many rooms” and likens his life to a phonograph needle, listening to the “scratches, hisses, the pops that even now sound like the many years of himself…” These metaphors are woven into poems of sustained power throughout the section and affirm Dickey’s poetic strength in illuminating ordinary objects and people so that readers easily connect with his vision.

Dickey belongs among the Best of American Poets, and Wires Over the Homeplace is a significant work of contemporary poetry – each poem in the volume is a polished gem. He adds another star to Pinyon’s galaxy of outstanding American poets. Dickey is a poetry and philosophy instructor in Omaha, Nebraska and has published poetry book reviews, poetry, fiction, plays, and creative non-fiction in over 100 journals. His recent books include They Say This is How Death Came Into the World and Liberal Limericks of 2012, a collection of humorous political poems.

Order Wires Over the Homeplace from Pinyon Publishing, 23847 V66 Trail, Montrose, CO 81403.

WIDOW ZION

As I lived in the Mideast for two years back in the 70’s, I’m aware that life in that corner of the world can provide rich material for a novel, a book of non-fiction or poetry. I’ve written three books about my sojourn in Iran, and frequently contemplate finishing another novel about the country that I lived in during the reign of the Shahanshah. I wasn’t surprised to discover that Perle Besserman’s newest novel, Widow Zion, incorporates her descriptions of and experiences in the Mideast and as writer-in-residence at the Mishkenot Sha’ananim Artists’ Colony in Jerusalem.

Published by Pinyon Publishing a few weeks ago, Widow Zion is a serious read about the complex Middle East. The novel quickly moves a prosperous Jewish American widow from New York and Miami to a Holy Land Tour in the chaotic world of Jerusalem during the years that Clinton sponsored the Camp David peace talks between Arafat and Rabin and the struggle between Jews and Arabs at that time. The apt quotation by Toni Craven preceding the beginning of the novel sets the scene for the contemporary battle between Palestine and Israel: “That Zion is a devastated mother is understandable; that she is a widow raises a troubling question; who and where is her husband?”

The disturbing adventures of Stella, a widow who seeks love amid this Mideast background following the death of her husband and the suicide of her beloved son, reveal a woman who seems to possess more romantic notions than good sense. Stella discards all vestiges of her former life, except her enormous wealth, and attempts to seduce Aryeh, her guide, in explorations of Jerusalem. Aryeh grieves the death of his wife, suffers from the effects of Israel’s endless battles, and daily ruminates about family destroyed during the Holocaust. Leo, Aryeh’s cousin who is a Holocaust survivor, tries to persuade Aryeh to pursue Stella for material gain, but he also introduces the spiritual aspects of this novel through his beliefs about tikkun or the re-ordering of a broken world.

I was alarmed by the widow throwing away all caution in her search for love–offering bribes, co-habiting with a black panther who abuses her, and finally succumbing to a stranger at her hotel, leaving us to wonder whether she found authentic love in this troubled world of the Mideast or experienced some kind of spiritual epiphany within this complicated construct.

Besserman’s descriptions of Jerusalem are stunning–she writes with the insights of a poet and the exactness of a journalist; e.g., “They walked slowly, Stella Richter occasionally stopping to comment on the creeping vines on every porch, the marigolds and pansies sprouting wildly, out of the cracks in the pavement, and the many pregnant cats that crossed their path. It took them almost forty-five minutes to walk all the way down to the Sea of Galilee (thought it should have taken no more than twenty) through the closed market smelling of fish and roasted sunflower seeds, past the movie theater, where Aryeh inquired about the performance schedule of the John Wayne Western in English with Hebrew sub-titles. Stella Richter had grown overheated with exertion and was panting–not unusual for a normally sedentary woman her age, which Aryeh estimated as sixty, his own…”

Besserman also introduces cultural differences among the nationalities milling about in Jerusalem, and I was amused at her description of differences between the Americans and the Brits when Aryeh makes the statement that because of their linguistic ties, Americans and British share a common cultural base. “The professor had shaken his wiry head and said, “No. They’re not the same at all. The difference between them, the big difference, is that the British draw boundaries between people and the Americans don’t…An American will meet you on a train for the first time and ask you what you do for a living or how much money you have in the bank or if you sleep in the nude. An Englishman will never ask you such personal question–not even after you’ve known him for a long time. The only thing I’ve heard them ask right away is, ‘What school did you attend?’ That is a very important piece of information with the British; it helps them distinguish between the people who count and those who don’t…”

Woven throughout the novel is the implicit message of universal spiritual emptiness that pervades most contemporary cultures and the hope that civilizations will resolve their differences and undergo spiritual renewal despite prevailing wars that beset Israel and the entire Mideast.

In reviewing this richly-textured novel, I couldn’t improve on the succinct blurb on the back cover, touting it as a story “based on the centuries’-old struggle between Jews and Arabs in its current Palestinian/Israeli incarnation–[a] contemporary re-telling of the ancient biblical story of exile and return that reveals the source of the so-called “clash of civilizations,” which lies within the Jewish Diaspora itself…”

Widow Zion is an arresting novel in which “the entire scene has become dreamlike, a heat-shimmering mirage,” written by a cosmopolitan author who has worked in the US, Europe, Canada, Australia, Japan, China, and the Middle East. Her books have been recorded and released in both audio and e-book versions and translated into over ten languages.  She has written two previous novels, Pilgrimage and Kabuki Boy, and two story collections, Marriage and Other Travesties of Love and Yeshivo Girl. Besserman holds a doctorate in Comparative Literature from Columbia University and has lectured, toured, taught, and appeared on television, radio, and in two documentary films.

For those readers who have lived in the Mideast, Widow Zion is a “must read.” Order from Pinyon Publishing, 23847 V66 Trail, Montrose, CO 81403.

MAGICAL, FANTASTICAL, ALPHABETICAL SOUP

I have on my desk this morning the latest publication of Pinyon Publishing in Montrose, Colorado: Magical, Fantastical, Alphabetical Soup, Mini Fictions, Prose Poems, & Rants by Chuck Taylor. The author of this volume invites readers not to be “weighted down by too many predetermined notions of what narrative should be,” and I felt free enough this morning to pursue the book straight through from A to Z. As I turned the pages, I was reminded of Montaigne who described his unique daydream-like writing: “I cannot keep my subject still...it goes along…staggering with a natural drunkenness…” Montaigne’s rumination aptly describes the natural flow of Taylor’s writing.

That last statement isn’t a negative assessment of his work. I think he has the kind of genuine vision attributed to the poet Charles Simic, moving us through surrealism and a sometimes dark view of human problems: hunger, poverty, violence, while managing to transform the everyday world into a place of mystery, “everything teetering on the edge of everything/With a polite smile...” as Simic says.

Taylor begins his alphabetical soup with a prose poem entitled “Artist of Shadows,” propelling us into the inner sanctum of a writer with a description that is familiar to many writers who take their insomnia to the computer and begin to compose: “the lamp lit, the fan running – white noise to block exterior sounds – the blinds shut tight; artist of the shadows of heart, the strange beatings inside, the mind waking with extraordinary thoughts, worries best kept to oneself, the others in the house sleeping…a tough old ox alone, artist of the shadows, his books on the wall…his laptop’s blue glow, tap, tap, words on the screen out in the night onto the Web for other artists of shadows who seek what they do not know…”

By the time I reached the letter “C,” I was smiling, as Taylor cruises along in his cool Chrysler convertible and crushes a chicken in his path, lamenting that he’s always quoting Albert Schweitzer concerning reverence for life. He pulls off the road to examine his car for remnants of the bird, only to discover moths and butterfly bits of wings, then sets these remains on a pyre of twigs and lights it. As he imagines himself an Indian, he sings mourning songs in the dark and “dreams respect for the living and the dead.” Profundity and wit combine in two pages of a prose poem that will delight those who like to hear the sound of a sardonic voice within wise revelations.

In one of the most humorous mini essays in Magical,Fantastical, Alphabetical Soup, Taylor exhorts everyone, at least once in their lives, to wear a dress, citing the example of Sinclair Lewis who once put on an evening gown to impress flappers. He defines the dress as being the opposite of armor, touting that it displays vulnerability and trust and that the world doesn’t deserve women wearing dresses. “The world contains way too much dope, rape, destruction, and war,” he writes. “But women don’t think about it. They persevere, they continue to love, leaving themselves open for what begins life and what bears life, when they step out into the light wearing, like petals of a sunflower opening, a dangerous dress.” This prose is a “wow” piece of symbolism and wisdom.

Taylor’s prose poem entitled “Nature” reveals his perception that a relationship with nature is a necessary part of the awakening of consciousness and a surrender to stillness, “…the astonishment, the reality you hold in the moment, that you are not mortal.” The beautiful photograph on the cover of Magical, Fantastical, Alphabetical Soup taken by Taylor and designed by Susan Elliott reflects his perceptions about the natural world.

Youth, love, war, nature, Taylor covers both the surreal and ordinary, the social and political landscapes of American life, probing spiritual and moral concerns with irony, poetic skill, and philosophical insight . This book is indeed a magical, fantastical read, and Gary Entsminger at Pinyon has done it again by providing us with the work of a unique writer. Taylor’s prose poems and mini stories contain startling imagery and metaphors in a style reminiscent of those beat writers who freed themselves from the traditional canon of literature. He moves us from the staleness of form that permeates a civilization preoccupied with form into the light of the present moment wearing Simic’s “polite smile.”

Chuck Taylor has been a balloon clown, a soft water salesman, janitor, laundry worker, children’s magician, nursery school teacher, bookseller, and publisher. He operates an independent literary press, Slough, and teaches creative writing, Beat Literature, and American Nature Writing at Texas A&M. His book of poems, What Do You Want, Blood? was awarded the Austin Book Award.

Order from Pinyon Publishing, 23847 V66 Trail, Montrose, CO 81403.

THE WILDERNESS POETRY OF WU XING

Susan Elliott, artist and designer of Pinyon Publishing’s newest publication, The Wilderness Poetry of Wu Xing by Peter Waldor, should get an award for the lovely cover design of this book! I always look forward to seeing Susan’s book covers and illustrations as they compare in excellence with the poetry and prose in the volumes that Pinyon produces. 

The Wilderness Poetry of Wu Xing evokes curiosity about the ancient poet Wu Xing and his succinct poems, as Waldor’s spare verse echoes his master’s voice in the wilderness where “he seeks places with no trails…perhaps not walked/for years,/an animal path,/ancient and dim.” Waldor’s sense of wonder has been nurtured by this ancient Asian master and sustains him in a contemporary world that often shuns the idea of seeking solitude in wilderness places. He responds to the busyness of that world in his poem “Exile,” writing: “Should I say/I am lost,/far from home,/as the masters/say from/their exiles?/I am glad/to be walking/high above/a village full/of strangers.” Yet, he also confesses a contradictory feeling, saying “…the further out/the friendlier people are,/even if they come/to avoid people.”

This is a book of brief tributes to Wu Xing and the natural world, written with the touch of a word watercolorist who quickly captures a walk in the wilderness where a “dream [is] gone/before the sleeper/awakes.” However, readers should savor and reflect on the verses to glean the wisdom and poetic tone of both Wu Xing living in his Asian wilderness and Peter Waldor struggling in his present-day wilderness.

In Wilderness Poetry, Waldor illuminates the ineffable with powerful lyrics that have a minimal construct, and it’s obvious that he hears a different drummer, one who adheres to the old maxim: “maximal meaning in minimal wording.” In the end poem entitled “Step, Rest,” he achieves 20 lines, but this is the longest poem in the book. Waldor’s work carries the influence of Oriental haiku, not relying on narrative but achieving wonderful visual representations, using minimal characters and descriptions; e.g., “Old Wheel:” “a girl runs in a clearing,/her far-off laughter/sounds like a wheel/grinding the road./Her black braid/darts behind her—/a curving black line.”

Readers will find both wisdom and whimsicality in the lyrics of Peter Waldor and will be inspired to seek their own places where “in the valley the artists/must be painting cherry blossoms again…where Nature’s rasp never stops/ rounding the edge.” This poet’s perceptive eye and deeply meditative mind introduce poetry lovers to a voice that brings welcome revelations about the beauty of the natural world and about living in the Now.

Pinyon’s editor and publisher, Gary Entsminger, publishes a variety of award-winning poets and writers, and Waldor is among this tribe –he was a finalist for the 2009 National Jewish Book Award. His work has been featured in numerous literary journals, including The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, the Iowa Review, Pinyon Review, Colorado Review, and other poetry publications. He works in the insurance business and lives in northern New Jersey and Telluride, Colorado.

The Wilderness Poetry of Wu Xing can be ordered from Pinyon Publishing, 23847 V66 Trail, Montrose, Colorado 81403.

THE SINGING INSIDE

One of the perks of my association with Pinyon Publishing is that I sometimes form a friendship with a fellow poet, via e-mail, and the poet and I make a spiritual connection through reading each other's work.  One of those incidents of serendipity has been through my recent correspondence with Michael Miller, a very fine poet who lives in Amherst, Massachusetts.

Michael and I share a fondness for the New England poet Robert Francis, "a man who owned freedom and leisure," as I described him in a former poem – a poet who subsisted on a pittance for years before being recognized as an important New England poet.

I reviewed Michael Miller's newest book of poetry, Into This World, published by Pinyon Publishing, a few weeks ago, and before I traveled to Florida recently, Miller referred me to another of his works, The Singing Inside, a beautiful book of poetry set by hand in 14 pt. Perpetua, a font designed by Eric Gill.  The text was printed letterpress on a Heidelberg Original Cylinder press, and the cover was printed by hand on a 10x15 Chandler and Price platen press.  Artwork was printed from wood engravings by Frank C. Eckmair, and the book was designed and printed by Birch Brook Press.

I describe these exterior qualities because I seldom see such beautiful, hand-printed books of poetry.  The Singing Inside accurately defines the poetry inside – the singing inside of a man who pays tribute to his wife and their journey together as they mature in married love, passionately and honestly.  There are so many fine poems in the volume that I wouldn't strike out even one as unfit for the theme of married love, from its inception as a passionate love affair to the present decade of their aging.  Miller sings about the latter stage of married love: "Our house is singing as it sinks/A gradual decline with choruses/We can hear beyond the floorboards/Cracking, the old beams creaking,/The stone foundation shifting as if/It were looking for a place to escape./How we resist our body's aging!/Resentful of our brittle bones,/Our muscles slackening as if asleep,/Come, let's open all the windows/And sing to the warblers, the wrens."

I was also impressed by the cogent feelings expressed in two exquisite love poems reminiscent of the Persian poet Rumi, on facing pages, XIX and XX, the latter defining a love that has been plumbed and kept intact: "We have delved into the anatomy/Of each other's darkness,/Of each other's light,/Uncovering a grave,/Unveiling a hidden sun./We have explored without a caution,/Reconnoitering each other's heart,/Refusing to believe there is/Nothing left to discover."

Although Miller speaks of "maple leaves reddening and curling at their edges," he recognizes that mature love takes "decades of struggle/And ease to arrive at this/Three-foot wall built with/Smooth and rough stones/Where the countries of lichen grow,/And we sit upon it looking out/With the joined perfection of hands."

These poems are true and powerful – no frills, each word crafted with precision, each poem condensed into tight, concrete imagery and rendered in passionate phrasing.  I read this volume while vacationing in Weston, Florida, a city of wonderful light and felt a synchronicity of environment and the wonderful clarity and light in The Singing Inside.

INTO THIS WORLD

I went into the Barnes and Noble University Bookstore this morning and came out with a children’s book entitled Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made that I seriously thought about reviewing in this blog. However, readers were saved from my foisting the choice of a notable volume of juvenile wit on them by the arrival of the morning mail. A trip to the post office yielded more serious literature in the form of my favorite genre–a book of poetry, fresh from the press of Pinyon Publishing in Montrose, Colorado.

Publisher Gary Entsminger has done it again–published the work of a prize-winning poet of unmistakable talent. Michael Miller’s Into This World rivals the latest blockbuster novel in terms of being a page turner–I read the 73-page volume in one sitting and closed the book with thoughts about Donald Hall’s evaluation of poetry: “Poems are not about anything because they are about everything.” Michael Miller’s work encompasses that everything–love, war, the natural world, death…ladybugs, bumblebees, dogs, polar bears…

Miller’s poems achieve the balance of darkness and light, of the intrepid heart pitted against a broken world, each poem rendered with grace and a sense of the invincible spirit of humans; e. g., “Private Bayless:” “Before the dark shoulders of mountains/setting forth on a night mission/With the wind’s breath/Blowing across his face, pricking him/With invisible needles of sand,/ He smells death in the air./ “The Taliban, the Taliban,” a voice/Gnaws at his mind and he prays/to leave Afghanistan alive, intact./Should a bullet sever his spinal cord, He will make love to his wife/With his eyes, blinking signals/For the acts he cannot perform.”

This is only one of the war poems that indicates the deftness with which Miller handles human woundedness, condensing emotions into short lyrical bursts in poems bearing the names and ranks of soldiers: “Private Wheeler,” “Corporal Bedford,” “Lance Corporal Webster”…and ending this section with the reflection about “Corporal Sayers:” “…He never saw the faces of the men he killed./The war is over,/The dead will not run across a ridgeline,/And he has returned,/Refusing to kill a spider.”

There is no artifice in this poet’s ruminations. A keen observer of human passion, he writes a spare poem about how a man “ignited from within brightens the night…singeing the grass/alarming the milkweed.” In the section entitled “Song of the Body,” Miller’s poetry sings in what I’d call wry rapture --songs containing the lyrics of an enduring married love that challenges the shallowness of post-modern promiscuity. He creates and recreates scenes of marital intimacy: “X. Their blue sheets are the color/Of the irises blooming in their garden,/Bordering the two-foot stone wall;/They planted the irises,/They built the wall,/Their hands know earth, stone,/And now they continue to seek/The undiscovered regions/Of each other’s body, /The new concealed within the old.”

As I’m a writer in my 70’s, I quickly identified with Miller’s commentary on aging in his poignant signature of acceptance entitled “Dusk.” “…Like the long grass of late September/On the meadow where I walk at dusk, /Knowing the darkness will arrive/With a part of me welcoming it.” Again, that quality of wry rapture is caught in another poem about age entitled “No Matter Our Age,” the last nine lines illuminating his acceptance of growing older. “More than your body/I wanted the love/Which flickered in your eyes./So our unwritten history began/Which I value each morning,/Waking to its freshness/No matter our age/Or the architecture/Crumbling around us.”

Approximately 20 years ago, my spiritual director told me I should stop writing “little poems” and begin writing “great poems,” a task which I've attempted for years, and I do know when I read “great poems.” Michael Miller achieves the kind of emotional intensity and integrity that make poems in Into This World “great poems;” in which ordinary themes provoke much serious contemplation.

Cover photograph by Gary Entsminger, editor and publisher of Pinyon Publishing, 23847 V66 “Trail, Montrose, Colorado 81403. 

WHY WATER PLANTS DON’T DROWN

My good friend, Victoria Sullivan, has written a book, Why Water Plants Don’t Drown, about aquatic and wetland plants, beautifully illustrated by Susan Elliott, artist, ecologist, and writer with Pinyon Publishing, a quality press located in the U.S. Rockies in Montrose, Colorado. Pinyon published the book on October 15, and we arrived in New Iberia Friday to find boxes of it safely stored with our friend, Janet Faulk-Gonzales.

Vickie, a writer and botanist, has a Ph.D. in biology from Florida State University and is a former professor with the University of Louisiana in Lafayette. She has published numerous botanical papers, fiction, and non-fiction, including the speculative novel, Adoption, also published by Pinyon. Vickie was recently honored by a new flower species Eupatorium sullivaniae being named after her, crediting her extensive scientific research on the Eupatorium genus.

Susan Elizabeth Elliott studied botany and French at Humboldt State University and has a Ph.D. in biology from Dartmouth College. She has published fiction and nonfiction, and her paintings are showcased in Open the Gates: Poems for Young Readers by Dabney Stuart, as well as in Why Water Plants Don’t Drown. Her drawings and paintings in Why Water Plants Don’t Drown greatly enhance and clarify the scientific text.

The following is an interview with Vickie in which she talked about this basic biological and ecological text:

Moore: I know that you wrote one version of Why Water Plants Don’t Drown in the 90’s and didn’t write this later version until last year. What prompted you to “begin again?”

Sullivan: I wrote a children's version of Why Water Plants Don’t Drown, which was bought by Franklin Watts, a division of Grolier that was then bought by Scholastic. My manuscript got sidelined in the buy out, and my editor there didn’t continue with Scholastic. I asked to be released from the contract with Scholastic and began looking for a new publisher. Pinyon Publishing became interested, but wanted the book pitched to nature enthusiasts of any age and to contain more science. I rewrote the manuscript, keeping the title and general categories of water plants. Gary Entsminger, the publisher, and Susan Elliott, the illustrator and botanist, provided excellent comments and suggestions for additions (and subtractions) from my draft manuscript.

Moore: What do you mean by Survival Strategies of Aquatic and Wetland Plants?

Sullivan: Plants that normally live on dry land cannot live in water or wet places for very long. Aquatic and wetland plants can only do so because they have adaptations that allow them to thrive in such habitats. Regardless of where they live, all plants have basic needs that must be met. They must have adequate light and concentrations of needed gases, the body must be supported, and they must be able to reproduce.

Moore: Why is light a problem for water plants?

Sullivan: Plants make food using sunlight or artificial light in the case of aquaria, but when light passes through water some wavelengths they need are filtered out. Plants living submerged in water must compensate by being more efficient in absorbing the light waves that they need.

Light and need for gases are linked in water plants. All plants need two gases, carbon dioxide and oxygen, and these are not as concentrated in water as they are in the air above the water. Water plants trap gases in air spaces in their bodies for later use. The same plant tissue that traps gases also allows them to float in water, in other words, to be supported by the water. If you examine a water hyacinth plant, a common floating plant in parts of the US, especially the southeast, you'll see that much of the plant is made of air spaces. Being supported by water is important because if water plants sink too deeply below the surface, they’ll be below the level of adequate light penetration for photosynthesis.

Being stiffly supported by hard stems and tough leaves, as in land plants, is a disadvantage in water. Water currents flowing across such stiff plants would tear them apart. Water plants that grow submerged tend to be soft and flimsy providing little resistance to the currents.

Moore: How do plants reproduce in water? On land, plants have flowers that make seeds. Do water plants have underwater flowers?

Sullivan: Reproduction by seeds varies in water plants and may occur after pollination underwater in some species or above water in flowers that attract pollinators. Underwater flowers are very nondescript and even hard to recognize as flowers. A common feature of water plants is to reproduce by cloning without seeds that is by breaking apart with parts growing into new plants. Hydrilla, the invasive scourge, and other water plants are able to spread as carry pieces of plants are carried from place to place on boats, wading birds, etc. In addition, hydrilla and others like it produce underground buds in great abundance that lie dormant for periods of time.

Flooded soils are low or lacking in oxygen, which is a problem that rooted aquatic and wetlands plants must overcome. Roots need oxygen and land soils have oxygen in air pockets among the soil particles. The aquatic and wetland plants I call snorkelers, pump oxygen to the roots in various ways from the surface. Water lilies, for example, take in gases through stomates in their floating leaves. As the sun heats the leaves, the gases expand and get pushed down through column in the leaf stalks, all the way to roots. Excess gases are pushed out into the underwater soils providing oxygen to other organisms. Methane, or marsh gases, and carbon dioxide from the roots move up the columns within these plants and are leaked into the atmosphere through stomates of older leaves.

Moore: in talking with Lorraine Kingston, owner of the New Iberia Books along the Teche bookstore, she suggested that the book should attract Louisianans because of the interest in environmental concerns – salt water intrusion and the demise of vegetation along the coast. Do you think your book will provide insights into Louisiana environmental problems? What about wetland plant loss?

Sullivan: Lack of sedimentation is a major problem for wetland habitats, and finding a means of replenishing flow of sediments is needed and being worked on. Over 40% of wetland habitats in the U.S. occur in Louisiana, and between 1932 and 2010, Louisiana lost 25% of its wetlands. Levees channelized natural waterways preventing overflow, robbing wetlands along the watercourse and coastal marshlands downstream of a flow of nourishing sedimentation. Without a sediments supply, marshlands erode and plants die leaving behind open water.

Intensive oil and gas industry development in Louisiana has damaged coastal wetlands. Spoil from canals dug to access well sites is piled along canal banks, smothering plants and impeding the flow of water and sediments. Also, the extraction of oil and gas from underground causes the marshes to sink and be replaced by open water.

Assessment of the impact of the British Petroleum Deepwater Horizon oil spill is in its early stages. Marsh plants growing 15-30 feet from the shoreline were killed, and as this happened, roots could no longer hold sediments, and erosion from wave action along the marsh edges more than doubled.

Moore: How does sea level rise affect coastal wetlands?

Sullivan: Sea level rise affects coastal wetlands worldwide. Over time, elevations of marshes rise naturally through sedimentation and vegetation decay. However, if sea levels rise too rapidly, natural sedimentation can be outpaced, and coastal wetlands retreat inland, if possible or disappear. The EPA has predicted that during the next century, sea levels will rise 6 to 13 inches, which would inundate coastal wetlands. Over time sea levels rise during interglacial period, like this one, but the current pace of rise is higher than previous interglacial periods.

Moore: Tell me a little about each category of water plants you wrote about:

Sullivan: There are four categories of water plants and each one has a particular set of strategies or adaptations for surviving in water and wetlands. Diver is the playful name I give to plants that grow submerged in water. They float in the water at levels where there is sufficient light for photosynthesis, and are enabled by special air filled tissue to do so. A few are water pollinated, but some like Bladderwort produce lovely yellow or purple flowers above the water. Bladderworts are carnivorous plants that trap small aquatic animals in bladder traps. The cover illustration of Why Water Plants Don't Drown is of a bladderwort in flower and shows the underwater traps. Some of the most noxious aquatic plants such as hydrilla and water milfoils are divers. Many species of divers in marine habitats provide important nursery grounds for shrimp and fish.

Floaters include a disparate variety of species such as water hyacinths, duckweeds, mosquito fern and others. As the playful designation implies they float on the water surface, un-rooted in the soil. The leaves of water hyacinth act as sails and colonies like great rafts move on lakes and waterways. Water hyacinths invaded from South America and spread throughout the southeastern U.S. from plants given away at the International Cotton Exposition held in New Orleans in 1884. The exotic, purple flowers, with yellow encircled bull's eye nectar guides, attract pollinators.

The water lily and lotus are floating-leaf plants familiar to everyone. The circular or heart shaped leaf blades attached to long leaf stalks and float on the water surface. The leaf stalks attach deep underwater to horizontal buried stems. Inside the leaf stalks are hollow passageways for movement of gases from leaf blades downward to roots and back upward to leaf blades. I have dubbed this process snorkeling, which is common among the fourth category of wetland plants.

Waders are in the category of plants that grow in wet area with the upper part above water. The depth of water in which they grow varies. Many waders have proven to be snorkelers that are beneficial in oxygenating soils and ridding soils of methane. A few examples include cattails, the several species Spartina, bull tongue, mangroves, bald cypress, and cardinal flower. Leaves receive full sunlight unfiltered by water, have stiff supportive above water plants, and reproduce by seeds. Many in this category are wind pollinated grasses and sedges, which typically have reduced flower parts. Others such as the cardinal flower, with its spectacular red flowers, attract pollinators, in this case insects and hummingbirds.

Moore: Artist Susan Elliott is an ecologist as well as an artist, and her illustrations are beautiful. How did you and Susan coordinate the writing and illustrations for the book?

Sullivan: I feel very lucky to have found Susan to work with me on this book. Not only is she a wonderful artist, but she has a PhD in botany. We have never met although I feel like I know her. We worked entirely online, and our work began with my preparing a list of what I thought a reader would find helpful to have illustrated. She honed a method by trial and error aided by her knowledge of technique and software. A method evolved in which she emailed a "pencil" sketch attachment of each illustration, on which I commented as necessary, and she would adjust. She then colored using some computerized method, which is still mysterious to me.

Moore: Did the two of you have an audience in mind when you began work on the book?

Sullivan: I guess you could say we were passionate about making a book that would interest and entertain readers as much as we were interested in the topic. Aquatic and wetland plants are like desert plants in the sense that are found only in certain places. That enhances their specialness for me and digging into the natural history of water plants reveals layers of mystery.

Moore: Why is flooding a serious problem for plants if water plants don’t drown?

Sullivan: The title is a tongue in cheek because of course, drowning is a phenomenon that happens when lungs fill with water depriving us and any other land animal of oxygen. Plants don't have lungs, but their cells do need oxygen. When soils are flooded, water fills the air pockets between the soil particles and microorganisms use up the rest of the oxygen dissolved in water. Root cells become deprived of oxygen, which they need desperately. Water plants have ways of getting oxygen to the root cells that other plants don't have, and this is why they don't "drown."

Moore: Do you and Susan plan to work on another book together?

Sullivan: I’m open to the possibility, but we haven’t discussed it.

PATH OF LIGHTNING

Yesterday, when I arrived back in New Iberia, Louisiana for my winter sojourn, I found a package of books from Pinyon Publishing in Montrose, Colorado, one of which I had ordered several weeks ago, a spiritual autobiography entitled Path of Lightning by Barbara Schmitz. The book lives up to its title as a path of lightning as the author takes readers on her zigzagging search for God that begins with her Roman Catholic childhood in Nebraska and continues into her apprenticeship with Shahabuddin Less, a Sufi teacher with the Sufi Order of the West.

Schmitz’s journey is a long, circuitous one that takes her from Naropa Institute and study with Allen Ginsburg, (who was invited there by the Tibetan Lama Chogyam Trungpa), to a Peace Vigil above the Wailing Wall in Israel, with travels along the way in Bali, India, Turkey, and Kashmir.

Schmitz, an English teacher and writer living in Norfolk, Nebraska, also studied Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell, and Paramahansa Yogananda, made pilgrimages to sacred places around the world searching for mystical experiences, and ultimately found her place within the Sufi tradition by practicing Sohbet (spiritual discourse) with Shahabuddin, her teacher and mentor.

During her journey through “two year intensives,” and the deepening of her spiritual experiences, Schmitz began to feel despair and experienced the “dark night of the soul,” a period of boredom and aridity accompanied by stagnation of will and intelligence. She quotes from one of my favorite authors, Evelyn Underhill, the Anglican mystic who wrote the “bible” on the enhancement of consciousness, Mysticism: A Study of the Nature and Development of Man’s Spiritual Consciousness, and who advocated that the dark night is a natural balance to the highs of spiritual exultation and the reception of the Holy Spirit. Underhill would have applauded Schmitz’s long journey as she wrote that “we are all the kindred of mystics…”

I particularly appreciated the section relating to the famous Turkish-born poet Rumi, who has gained popularity in the U.S. with the publication of his famous poem (included in Path of Lightning): “This we have now/is not imagination. /This is not/grief or joy. /not a judging state, /or an elation, /or sadness. /Those come and go. /This is the presence/that does not…”

Schmitz is a poet who has been recognized by Natalie Goldberg as someone who “endeavors to understand the mystery and beauty of being alive. I name her the Queen of Constancy for her devotion to meditation and never letting up or giving up on her spiritual journey.” One of Schmitz’s minimal poems in Path of Lightning, which she wrote on a pilgrimage to Turkey, illustrates her training in and mastery of metaphor, as well as her appreciation for the style of Sufi poet Rumi: “In Turkey/in the cemeteries/the uncut grass/on graves above/grows long/competing/with the uncut hair/beneath.”

Schmitz struggles through the four C’s on her journey: “Compare Not, Complain Not, Criticize Not, and Condemn Not” and remarks, “If I really do these, there’s not much left to talk about. I made a small sticky note with the four C’s on it and attached it to a photo on my desk at work to remind me to practice them at school. I gave it a stab – glad I didn’t have to report to anyone on how well I did them…” Those four C’s resonate throughout the Path of Lightning and are good guideposts for anyone engaged in a deeper search for spiritual enlightenment and compassionate treatment of fellow human beings.

On one of Schmitz’s trips to India, she pays loving tribute to her husband who has made his own spiritual journey alongside her to various countries and through her many illuminations. The sincerity of this passage impressed me deeply: “I sometimes don’t notice right at the moment, but Bob is as much my teacher as Shahabuddin, probably from the moment I made the decision to trust that my love for him (Bob) would lead me to God. He is always beside me, clarifying, discussing, helping, redirecting me when I get mixed up or confused…”

This is an unusual book written in a highly accessible style by a highly enlightened person who was given the name Vajra by her Sufi teacher after her first trip to India – a name that means “transformation by the lightning bolt,” and the Path of Lightning is filled with illuminating flashes that will attract readers interested in further developing their spiritual growth.

An incisive note by Schmitz on the compassion advocated throughout Path of Lightning: “Our path is to live with others, to learn to be a human being, Self analysis is looking at the self in relation to one’s family, peers, and friends…and I remember Shahabuddin teaching in one of our seminars, ‘We are sitting on a pile of gold. Why do we want to pick up rocks?’” After reading this personal odyssey about self awareness and growth toward “otherness,” we might ask, “Why indeed?!”

Available at Pinyon Publishing, 23847 V66 Trail, Montrose, CO 81403.

PRODUCING YOUR OWN FOOD, PART II.

Tomatillos and tomatoes
for salsa

This is Part II of an interview with Gary Entsminger, editor and publisher of Pinyon Publishing and the Pinyon Review, about Growing Your Own Produce. Gary and Susan Elliott, who does the artwork for Pinyon, have a home garden that supplies a significant part of their vegetarian diet, and they take time from book publishing duties to cultivate and maintain this garden on the Uncompahgre Plateau in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado.

Moore: When we exchange e-mails weekly, you’ve often just finished a batch of sauce or salsa verde for preserving. Is preserving food an expensive process?

Entsminger: It depends on how you count costs. From garden to canner takes time and work. If we were paying ourselves by the hour it would be cheaper to buy from the supermarket. But we do this for pleasure as well as the rewards, and as I said earlier, this is about tradeoffs. We know exactly what goes into our gardens and our canned goods.

Moore: Do you use special cookware for preparing food for preserving? And do you use special seasonings when you’re cooking up a sauce or other food?

Gary tending the sauce

Cooking in iron pots

Entsminger: We prepare much of our food, for canning and daily cooking, in cast iron skillets and Dutch Ovens. We make a variety of tasty sauces and salsas simply by varying the ingredients (e.g., more chilies make a better bean enchilada sauce; fewer chilies might be better for rice, fewer yet for pasta). We’re vegetarians and eat some variation of beans, potatoes, rice, or pasta almost every day. Any of our canned sauces can be turned into a sauce for Indian, Italian, Mexican, or American food easily. We don’t season any of our sauces and salsa except with the fresh produce (onions, garlic, chilies) that we use when canning. So, later if we want to create an Indian dish, we can add Indian spices. Ditto for others (Mexican, Italian). But we always add a pinch of salt, olive oil, vinegar, and lime juice to all our sauces and salsas. This increases the basic flavor and also increases the acidity for safer preservation.

Moore: I know you make a lot of salsa verde because you've written me enough times after you've prepared a batch of it to make me hint for a jar of my own. What else do you and Susan can?

Entsminger: We also can roasted chilies, peaches, peach jam, applesauce, and dill pickles. This summer, like most years, we preserved 90-100 quarts of the vegetables and fruits I mentioned, and I’m pleased to say that none of our produce traveled more than 20 miles. So we’re helping to bring down that 1000 mile average of tomato travel in the US.

Moore: You've also mentioned to me that you have a greens garden, with kale, chard, spinach, and others. How much of the year can you maintain a greens garden?

Entsminger: As long into winter as weather allows. Winter comes early in the Rockies, and we have to be creative with covering the greens on cold nights and growing greens on the most protected side of our cabin. Ideally, we’d have a “real” greenhouse, so maybe one day...

Susan holding the bounty

Moore: Do you have caveats to add about home gardening and preserving the “bounty” you harvest?

Entsminger: Yes. Our approach probably wouldn't work for most modern Americans who commute an hour or more each day to work. But that’s also another trade-off. We work out of our cabin, and thus we have that commuting time to garden and preserve. Ours is an old fashioned approach, but it still remains the best one for us.

Photographs by Gary Entsminger and Susan Elliott

SPILLED MILK: HAIKU DESTINIES

After a long journey of 2,000 miles, round trip, we returned to the quietness of The Mountain at Sewanee yesterday. The trip incited feelings I already possessed when I left on the trip – that there’s too much noise in the world – and traveling to several tourist spots in Virginia helped to deepen those feelings. When I left The Mountain, situations I had observed and read about caused me to consider how much noisy divisiveness and polarity is rife in the world today – from querulous family clans to warring factions of religious and political groups. As my old friend, Rumi the poet ,wrote: “Silence is an ocean./Speech is a river./When the ocean is searching for you,/Do not walk into the language-river./Instead, listen to the ocean/and bring your talky business to an end…”

So when I picked up my mail and found one of Pinyon Publishing’s award-winning books of poetry in my mailbox, an hour later, I was deeply immersed in this book of well-crafted poems entitled Spilled Milk: Haiku Destinies,” written by Gary Hotham, a book that emphasizes the brevity of language in haiku. As I read the pithy, quiet lines, a bit more peace entered my world, and I finished the book in one sitting.

Haiku poetry is a contradiction – the 5-7-5 syllable count, or other less strict but brief, lines are minimal but they require time and deep consciousness to absorb the meaning of what one critic calls the “haiku moment of awakening.” Implicit in the book’s message is that Gary Hotham was absorbed in deeply-conscious “noticing” to see the small moments in his everyday world that resulted in the lovely revelations he records in Spilled Milk: Haiku Destinies. The revelations contain universal messages and emphasize the gratifications we can experience by observing small occurrences in our daily lives – if we look and listen carefully, rather than engage in “talky business.”

As I’ve just returned from a time when I looked out of hotel windows every morning, I was drawn to  the succinct lines: “enough sunrise—/a small window/in an old hotel.” The poem encapsulates the first moments of pulling back the curtains to peer at a sunny day from the vantage point of a venerable motel room where a person may not wish to be, but the sun and promise of a new experience makes the hotel room seem bearable.

I love the clear allusion to what we would call a “bad day” or reference to a time when we feel burdens are heavy on our shoulders in Hotham’s poem: “worn out day/rocks the river left on top/of each other.” And think of the implications of an unbridled energy, the promise of a peak moment down the road that lies in the haiku: “morning walk—/nothing for the stone fence/to stop.”

Spilled Milk: Haiku Destinies contains over 100 of these metaphysical gems, and is interspersed with section pages of Susan Elliott’s lovely black and white paintings of birds and plants rendered in simple brush strokes, Oriental style. The two spare renderings of poetry and art complement each other in a volume that will give readers moments of peace and insight.

The introduction and essay at the end of the book provide entry into the realm of haiku and the art of creating short words in short poems. The entire book is a commentary on the art of being quietly alive and stands in antithesis to the experience I mentioned above concerning the world’s noisiness.

Gary Hotham was recently awarded an Honorable Mention in the Summer 2012 Mildred Kanterman Memorial Merit 2011 Book Award competition sponsored by the Haiku Society of America, which honors excellence in published haiku, translation, and criticism.

Spilled Milk: Haiku Destinies rates another cudo for Gary Entsminger, Pinyon publisher, and award-winning poet Gary Hotham – and brava, Susan Elliott, for capturing the haiku moment with your deft brush!

Order from Pinyon-Publishing, 23847 V 66 Trail, Montrose, CO 81403.