Welcome to National Poetry Month, when discriminating readers everywhere celebrate our most ancient and ever-new literary art form! As many of you know, I am modifying the way that I share a new poem written each day this month, a challenge I have enjoyed taking on each April since 2016. (Details can be found HERE.)

In addition to writing and sharing new poems, I am planning here to spotlight one book each day from my personal library, something that has deepened my knowledge of and pleasure in this most ancient of literary art forms. I am inspired this year by a quote from Marcus Tullius Cicero, first brought to my attention by former neighbor and passionate reader and writer, Barbara Bonner in 1985–a pithy bit of wisdom that I think of almost every day:

“If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.”

(For those who prefer the original, ” Si hortum in bibliotheca habes, deerit nihil”)

And for an interesting commentary on clarifying that clarifies the translation and provides a sense of historical context for the quote, please take a look at this lovely blog post at Lost and Found Books.

In that spirit, I am today sharing a few photographs of our inner and outer gardens, and will post updates on April 30, 2021. It is always such a transformation in Minnesota, those weeks from the end of March until the beginning of May. Here is what it looks like at the moment, inside our house and out.

We have had blooms inside recently from the plants we have wintered over in our east and south windows. A good thing, as now that the snows have receded, it still looks quite bare outside.

Yet, upon closer inspection, there is some greening of the grass this week, and even a few hardy blooms.

We are currently watching the emerging spears of our stalwart daffodils, daylilies, and newly planted spring bulbs, including an assortment of tulips and Asiatic lilies, along with white scilla. Yesterday, we saw our first returned robin of the year. Soon we will be raking away last year’s mulch of leaves, watching the new leaf buds open into green canopies, hanging the wren houses, repatriating the indoor plants to their preferred outdoor locales, planting seeds, purchasing starter tomato and pepper plants, and cutting a few pussy willow wands to bring inside. Stay tuned!

LIBRARY SPOTLIGHT for April 1, 2021

Tim found this intriguing book at Dragonfly Books in Decorah, Iowa two summers ago, and we are reading it together slowly. The chapters open with an introduction and then tackle the overlapping categories of poems: “Feelings,” “Characters,” “Forms,” “Difficulty,” “Wisdom,” and “Community.”

The prose is lucid, instructive, and, at times, laugh-out-loud funny, and we are enjoying Burt’s excerpts and selections from a wide range of poems–old favorites to the new-to-us examples–to illustrate her arguments. (For example, she compares and contrasts Wordsworth’s much anthologized “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud,” often called “Daffodils,” with Jennifer Chang’s snarky, modern-day take-off, “Dorothy Wordsworth.”)

REGARDING TODAY’S POEM:

I am mixing it up this year. Instead of (as in 2019 & 2020) choosing titles to inspire each day’s poems in alphabetical order, followed by four free-choice poems for April 27-30, I am beginning with three free-choice poems, proceeding to poems with titles in reverse alpha order, and concluding with a final free-choice titled poem on April 30. Wish me luck 🙂

Today’s poem, “April 1: Raspberry Fools,” revisits Bayfield, Wisconsin, the place where Tim and I first attempted gardening. (Incidentally, it was Barbara and Bob Bonner’s kind and timely advice that prevented the plumbing disaster alluded to in the poem!) We hope to revisit Bayfield again before too long, perhaps catch site of a rainbow there in 2022. Meanwhile, I plan to try a new dessert recipe over Easter weekend with these raspberries.

The raspberries were a gift from Julia, and I am inspired also by her introducing me to the concept of “cottage core.” This recipe is from “The Pioneer Woman” website.

That’s it for today!

Happy April 1, 2021! LESLIE