Halloween
"Nine little witches,
Nine little hats,
Nine orange pumpkins,
Three black cats." (Leslie Schultz)
Late in 2019, I was visiting my friend, Elvin Heiberg, at his home in Parkview East. Knowing my love of textiles, he invited me to see the work of master quilter, Edna Ness, who was selling some of her creations in his building. Her work is deft, imaginative, and beautifully executed. Immediately, I fell in love with a triple trio of little witches (did anyone else read Eleanor Estes’s The Little Witch over and over as a child?). I see that this is a whimsical riff on an historic pattern, especially popular in the 1930s called variously “Sunbonnet Sue” or “Sunbonnet Babies” for children’s bed quilts.
Here is a close-up of the center witch with her pumpkin and cat, so you can see the workmanship. Each dress has a different fabric, and each print is perfectly to scale.
As my daughter knows, I have long had an irrational but powerful fear of applique work. (Why? Who knows? That something will emerge puckered or askew after hours of work, I suppose.) In recent years, I have begun to counter this, helped by a class at our local quilt shop, Reproduction Fabrics. I made a wall hanging with birds and berries for my sister a few Christmases ago, and I have more applique projects planned (perhaps even incorporating machine sewing! Another hurdle for me that has been partially cleared by the past six months of sewing masks.) For now, I will just enjoy regarding up close the work of another quilter that is on display in my own kitchen.
(For a perspective on the “Sunbonnet Sue” design, please search for an article on Bertha Corbett Melcher, the “Mother of the Sunbonnet Babies” from the Minnesota Historical Society’s website.)
Some things just get better and better. The OrchardsPoetry Journal launched in August 2016 as a twice-a-year online publication. Now, with its eighth issue, not only are the poems available online, but also in a beautiful print format.
And it is chock full of poems I am glad to read and read again. You’ll have your own favorites, of course, but I thought I would mention just a handful of my own.
Molly Peacock, someone whose work I have enjoyed in a number of journals, is the feature poet of this issue of The Orchards. Of the selection here, I am especially taken with her poem “The Shoulders of Women.”
Among the many skillful sonnets in this issue, two–“Abandoned Church in France” by David W. Landrum and “Twilight” by Wendy Sloan–caught my full attention. I know I will return to read them again. Likewise, the very moving (and technically accomplished) villanelle by Allison Joseph, “After Receiving an Unsolicited Mailer from a Monument Company”, used form to soar into a new emotional place.
And I especially enjoyed seeing in print Sally Nacker’s poem for Edna St. Vincent Millay, “Steepletop Museum“, one I read in draft form a while back. Seeing it reminds me of conversation I had with Sally about her visit to St. Vincent Millay’s home near Austerlitz, New York. I, too, have loved St. Vincent Millay’s work since high school. When I worked at Carleton, I taped a photograph of her framed by magnolia branches over my desk in the Development Office, and so I was especially touched that Sally sent me postcards of the famous Remington typewriter and writing shack for my office here at home. Sally’s poem encapsulates the way a life and a place can become intertwined in a way that inspires legend. I am grateful for it because I recently read that the museum is now closed to the public, so it is unlikely I will ever be able to see it for myself.
In closing, I thought that I would offer a little background on the two poems of my own that appear in this issue.
“Blois”
This poem draws on memories of my first visit to the Loire Valley in March 2009, and specifically to a visit to Chateau de Blois.
View of the Loire River taken from the wall of Chateau de Blois.
The chateau has a long history and its history intersected with such fabled people as Jeanne d’Arc (1412 to 1431) and François I (who reigned from 1515 to 1547 and was a patron of Leonardo da Vinci). The chateau occupies the high ground but is linked to the town (and thence to several marvelous patisseries) by a wide and graceful stone staircase, essentially a public street, that envelopes a circular flower bed. It was François I who chose the salamander as his personal emblem.
(As for Images of the famous staircase and a little more on the spectacular chateau, here is a summary. Can’t believe that I was there but neglected to take a photograph of that magnificent architectural detail!)
“All Hallows”
I have been fascinated by owls for decades, at least since Tim and I bought this little bronze replica of an Etruscan statuette on the Ponte Vecchio in Florence back in 1997. Last year, we visited a wonderful new establishment in the small town of Houston, Minnesota, the International Owl Center. So impressed were we with its expansive mission and programming–and by the work of their in-house teaching owls, Ruby (a Great Horned Owl) and Uhu (a Eurasian Eagle Owl), that we returned later in the fall for a field trip Owl Prowl. This year, Tim and I both heard and spotted for the first time an owl in the wild–a Great Horned Owl in the Carleton Arboretum. I have yet to get a clear photograph of an owl–maybe one day. I did, however, find the inspiration for this poem–a meditation on the otherworldly magic of owls–after those visits to Houston, along with real world information on the need to protect owl habitat across the globe.
I hope you, too, will enjoy this watershed issue of The Orchards Poetry Journal!
You can read the issue online HERE. If you would like to order a copy of this first print edition, (as you know I did!) you can do that at the Kelsay Books website HERE.
