It is warmer here, today, and windy. If the wind abates, we are thinking of having a fire in the garden at dusk to relax after a long but productive week.

Library Spotlight on

A poet whose work I care deeply for, Stanley Kunitz, famously wrote that “a garden is a poem that is never finished.” And I feel that I am never finished reading and rereading his prose autobiography by way of a garden narrative, The Wild Braid: A Poet Reflects on a Century in the Garden. This account of the making his East Coastal garden in Provincetown, Massachusetts was published by W.W. Norton in 2005, when Kunitz was celebrating his 100th birthday by still tending to and enjoying his garden. It is lushly illustrated with photographs and adorned with excerpts from Kunitz’s work as a poet, but the focus is on the nitty gritty of gardening, the exhilaration and the heartbreak of amending soil and amending airy ideas by making room for the ideas your own patch of earth has to offer.

Born on July 29, 1905, Kunitz lived a life active in mind and body, winning the National Book Award in 1995 and serving as our national Poet Laureate — for the second time — in 2000.

This volume opens up in many directions, making it a wonderful gift for anyone who delights in gardens, poetry, photography, and thoughtful autobiography highlighting persistence, integrity, and a willingness to listen to what is and what might be.

REGARDING TODAY’S POEM:

These two sonnets, “The Exchange,” show the two points of view and are twins, in a way. After hours of writer’s block this morning, all it took was one old uncomfortable memory, an iambic pentameter first line, and the hope of exorcising the memory. The second sonnet was the gift, seeing the whole encounter from the other side, at least in my imagination! Both turn on questions and self-questioning.

Until tomorrow!

Leslie