To Garden Honestly

Posted by on
From "Minnesota" 1980 by Joan Mitchell An ornamental garden is not always what it appears to be The call to action appeared in my inbox: “are we gardening while the world burns?” Yes, I got the easy reference to Nero, Rome and all that, which is, historically, a fairly complicated story in itself. And yes, ornamental—as distinguished from food—gardening, could be considered an oblivious, even oppressive activity, especially if conducted with plenty of staff in the pursuit of displaying wealth using plants and techniques that harm ecosystems. But rebelliousness rose in me. As a serious modern gardener, I wondered, does this person not understand where gardening is situated in the history of our species and how it can be used to make a fierce statement about possible futures? And I’m not talking about utopian ideas of getting back to the Garden of Eden, either. Nettled, I did look around the internet and found that the phrase seems to have come from an essay in which the write ...
0

April is Poetry Month 2014: Kumin's "The Brown Mountain"

Posted by on

Maxine Kumin
This past year, we have lost fine poets that I grew up reading. Seamus Heaney, Derek Walcott and Maxine Kumin all made nature their poetic home and the source of their word-hoards.  Each was from a different home ecosystem and thus utilized different language and imagery. Yet their subject matter carried in common the themes of beauty, death, love, and life with others that great lyric poetry entails. Walcott’s high-flown eloquence, Heaney’s stubborn earthiness, Kumin’s plain speech; all are worth reading and savoring.

Just recently I was out in the backyard stirring my still-frozen compost heap, muttering incantations--imprecations--under my breath as I endeavored to wake it up for spring.  Maxine Kumin lived on a horse farm, and her compost heap was of another order entirely. For Poetry Month this year I present her meditation on compost.

The Brown Mountain

What dies out of us and our creatures,
out of our fields and gardens,
comes slowly back to improve us:
the entire mat of nasturtiums
after frost has blackened them,
sunflower heads the birds have picked clean, the still
sticky stalks of milkweed
torn from the pasture, coffee grounds,
eggshells, moldy potatoes,
the tough little trees that once 
were crowded with brussels sprouts,
tomatoes cat-faced or bitten into
by inquisitive chipmunks,
gargantuan cucumbers gone soft
from repose. Not the corn stalks and shucks,
not windfall apples. These
are sanctified by the horses.
The lettuces are revised
as rabbit pellets, holy with nitrogen.
Whatever fodder is offered the sheep
comes back to us as raisins
of useful dung.

Compost is our future.
The turgid brown mountain
steams, releasing
the devil's own methane vapor,
cooking our castoffs so that from
our spatterings and embarrassments--
cat vomit, macerated mice,
rotten squash, burst berries,
a mare's placenta, failed melons,
dog hair, hoof parings--arises
a rapture of blackest humus.
Dirt to top-dress, dig in. Dirt fit
for the gardens of commoner and king.
 (From Where I Live: New and Selected Poems 1990-2010)

Related Posts:
Walt Whitman, Deep Ecologist (Poetry Month 2013)
April is Poetry Month 2011
Gardener's Work
National Poetry Month in the Garden (2010)

Comments

Post a Comment