Pensive, published twice a year by Center for Spirituality, Dialogue, and Service (CSDS) at Northeastern University in Boston, is currently accepting submissions for its fifth issue. The deadline is May 15, 2023. If you would like to read this issue, you maybe read it online or download a pdf. file at no charge.
There are dozens of wonderful poems here, as well as sublime fiction (including “The Dervish in a Red Skirt” by Fiyola Hoosen-Steele), and the visual art is amazing (I am especially taken with the cover image, a mixed media piece called “Exile II” by Silvina Mizrahi, and the painting, “Ghost Bison,” by Serge Lecomte.)
Pensive: A Global Journal of Spirituality & the Arts is a young publication with a strong and nourishing, cross-cultural point of view. I am so pleased that my own poem, “Echoing Damocles,” (page 154) was chosen to be in this company!
One welcome consequence of living in Minnesota for many decades has been a growing appreciative for the land itself, and, more and more, I see this fascination with local nature reflected not only in my photography but in my poetry and fiction. Still, science is not my first language, and so I am so grateful that one of our permanent library denizens is a remnant of our homeschooling days. Acquired as a textbook for part of our fifth-grade homeschooling focus on Minnesota history and ecology, John Tester’s Minnesota’s Natural Heritage: An Ecological Resource (University of Minnesota Press, 1995; Mary Keirstead, Editor) is a gracefully written overview of the many biomes found within the borders of our state, and it is lushly illustrated with photographs, maps, and charts that make the detailed information readily absorbable. The text is organized into ten chapters that stand alone yet flow naturally. (A second edition was published in 2020.)
1. The Landscape
2. Climate and Weather
3. Principles of Ecology
4. Deciduous Forest
5. Northern Coniferous Forest
6. Tallgrass Prairie
7. Wetlands
8. Lakes
9. Streams and Rivers
10. The Future
John Tester (1929-2019) was born in the tiny town of Gibbon, in south-central Minnesota. At age nine, he helped a group of scientists to plant burr oak trees to restore an historical savannah. While working on his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota, Tester worked also for the Minnesota Department of Conservation and the Bell Museum of Natural History on the University of Minnesota campus. Later, he helped to found the University’s Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior within the College of Biological Sciences.
John Tester
Context for My Poem, “Startled by Pelicans”:
Last week, southbound about ten miles south of Northfield, between the two exits for Faribault, I saw a flock of American White Pelicans, a group of about 100 birds. Though I had seen brown pelicans before along the Gulf Coast, I had never seen white pelicans, nor any pelican in Minnesota. I wondered if I had been mistaken, but some research confirmed that they are not only frequently seen in our region but their numbers, once dwindling, are on the rise, according the Minnesota DNR. Cheers for this resurgant boreal songbird, at home on water and on the wing! And who knows on any seemingly drab day, flying about on routine errands, what we might see? This encounter was a good reminder to me to look up and look out. And, who knows? If I am alert and very lucky, perhaps one day I shall hear their song.
When I was hired by Carleton College, back in the dim mists of the 1980s, I had spent years as a nearly penniless, bibliophilic graduate student. Yes, it was nice finally to be able to buy groceries and to have health insurance and to have work I was good at that mattered, but the most exciting benefit came as a surprise: a well-curated bookstore, right on campus, that offered a substantial discount as well as a bookstore-specific charge account.
Those first few months were heady, indeed! Who cared that I might be in danger of owing my soul to the company store? I began to acquire books I had only ever been able to borrow from the library, such as all of the titles by Laura Ingalls Wilder and A. A. Milne. Under the guidance of Barbara Bonner, I augmented my purchases (from a previous two-year stint at the University Book Store in Madison, Wisconsin) of all of the Barbara Pym novels with more contemporary fiction. And some purchases were simply impulse buys.
The volume above falls into that category. It has, nonetheless continued to surprise me with its ongoing relevance and excitement after more than four decades in my library. Judiciously yet whimsically juxtaposing images from the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art with classic and contemporary poetry, and arranged by topics congenial to all ages, poets Koch and Farrell created a jewel box setting for poems and paintings to converse with each other. Such pairings as Elizabeth Bishop’s “Sleeping on the Ceiling” with “Untitled,” Jerry Uelsmann’s surreal gelatin silver photograph of 1976 or “The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter (after Li Po) by Ezra Pound with a Chinese scroll from thirteenth century titled “Wang Hsi-chih Watching Geese” agument each other while each element retains its distinctiveness. For all the windows it continues to open in my mind, this lavish collection is a keeper.
Context for My Poem, “Spring Snow”:
Today’s small poem, “Spring Snow,” draws from recent garden notes.
Siberian Scilla in April 2023–8:00 a.m.Siberian Scilla in April 2023–9:00 a.m.Siberian Scilla in April 2023–10:00 a.m.
A benefit of a leisurely book-sorting project is the opportunity to revist books again. Yesterday, I dipped into Owls and Other Fantasies: Poems and Essays (Beacon Press, Boston; 2003) by poet Mary Oliver (1935-2017). The collection brings together poems on birds from the first forty years of her publishing career, along with two essays, also on birds. Not surprisingly, it opens with her “Wild Geese,” and also not surprisingly, it will remain, along with other of her books, on my culled and dusted shelves, to be revisited soon.
Context for My Poem, “Yesterday”:
I took this still life, a little bronze replica of an Etruscan owl, that Tim and I bought decades ago on the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, against a piece of Labrodorite (also known as Spectrolite) that I gave Tim for one of our wedding anniversaries. (I think the lines, lights, and shadows of this form of feldspar look like forest branches.) When I took the photograph, I was thinking of how photographers speak of “captures,” and of how poets seize upon–or are seized by–images and ideas. It seemed to me that humans in their creative modes really do resemble raptors, at least during some of the process of creating.
Then, yesterday, reading Oliver’s essay, I learned that the Great Horned Owl, a fearsome raptor, has as their prefered food, brains. Not sure that my poem of the day addresses that odd natural fact adequately, but I wanted to begin to think about this.
The first poem in Nancy Willard’s collection of poetry, Carpenter of the Sun, (Liveright Press, New York, 1974) is called “How to Stuff a Pepper with Rice.” I love the whole of it, especially the surprise of the ending, the truth of it.
How to Stuff a Pepper with Rice
Now, said the cook, I will teach you
how to stuff a pepper with rice.
Take your pepper green, and gently,
for peppers are shy. No matter which side
you approach, it's always the backside.
Perched on green buttocks, the pepper sleeps.
In its silk tights, it dreams
of somersaults and parsley,
of the days when the sexes were one.
Slash open the sleeve
as if you were cutting a paper lantern,
and enter a moon, spilled like a melon,
a fever of pearls,
a conversation of glaciers.
It is a temple built to the worship
of morning light.
I have sat under the great globe
of seeds on the roof of that chamber,
too dazzled to gather the taste I came for.
I have taken the pepper in hand,
smooth and blind, a runt in the rich
evolution of roses and ferns.
You say I have not yet taught you
to stuff a pepper?
Cooking takes time.
Next time we'll consider the rice.
Nancy Willard
I can recall reading this poem for the first time in the dingy communal kitchen of a falling-down house I rented with friends during my senior year in college. It remains one of my all-time favorites. Since then, I have enjoyed reading Nancy Willard (1936 to 2017). She has many collections of poetry and works for children, including A Visit to William Blake’s Inn: Poems for Innocent and Experienced Travelers, which won the Newberry Medal in 1982.
Some years ago, a friend sent me a pretty amazing book called Eat This Poem. I just love it. (Thank you, Beth!) Among all its delicious contents, however, I was surprised that it did not include Nancy Willard’s poem. This morning, I stumbled upon a blog that Nicole Gulotta has created around her hybrid celebration of poetry and cookery. Yep! It has Willard’s poem and a recipe for “Poblano Stuffed Peppers with Goat Cheese!” Life is good.
Context for My Poem, “Cookbooks”:
My Own Modest Cookbook Library
Until I moved to Northfield, I did not truly understand that neighbors could also become the dearest of friends. Within a few weeks of moving here, in April of 1996, we had been made to feel very welcome indeed. Then, at a gathering across the street for that first July 4th here, I met Raymonde who lives few houses away. The Noers have enriched our lives in countless ways, not the least of which have been many conversations about literature and life. And Raymonde is the stand-out culinary artist of my acquaintance. How lucky our family is to have had meals at her table and gifts of birthday cakes, and soups and pastry for no particular reason!
Over the weekend, we received an email from Raymonde, that she and Richard were giving away “all our books!” They were in bags, ready to donate to our massive annual town booksale, held each spring in the local ice arena. But would we like to look them over?
It was a form of cosmic joke on me, because I am sorting through books myself, a few each day, feeling liberated, too, by making the hard cuts. But it was a lovely interlude on a wet, grey April day, to be a guest in Raymonde’s kitchen, sipping her delicious coffee with cream, looking through titles, many of which were already on our shelves, but many were new to us. Tim left with six enticing selections, and later, after an hour of conversation, I carried off a further twenty. Together, we were given two baker’s dozens–largesse we shall pass on in time.
So, what did this passionate reader keep, primarily, from her large library–cookbooks! Though recipes are widely and generously available on line, there is something elemental and comforting about reading a recipe on the page, perhaps making notes, and revisiting it on occasion over the years.
I have learned so much from friends, mostly about how to make life sweeter.
Birthday Cake from Raymonde!
Until tomorrow, wishing you a delicious day, LESLIE
