Month: June 2011

Ode to an Artichoke

Posted on by Meryl in Poetry

Both the reading last night and my garden this morning exceeded my expectations. No photos today, I waited too late, the light is fading. But tomorrow, the magic will appear here. Last night there was a good crowd, what they call in the world of flamenco “agusto,” meaning a combination of sympathetic, knowledgeable, and up for the event. It was fun hearing the different voices, and people I had never met bought my book.  The tart was a hit, too, I’m glad I brought it.

One of the poems I read was my translation of Neruda’s Ode to an Artichoke. I was reminded of this because a translation was posted on the Bennington Garden blog.  Of course, I prefer mine…feel free to compare.

 

Ode to an Artichoke


La alcachofa                                                                  The artichoke
de tierno corazón                                                         its tender heart
se vistió de guerrero,                                                  dressed for war,
erecta, construyó                                                         upright, built itself
una pequeña cúpula,                                                    a little cupola
se mantuvo                                                                    kept itself
impermeable                                                                 impermeable
bajo                                                                                 under
sus escamas,                                                                  its scales
a su lado                                                                         nearby
los vegetales locos                                                        the crazy vegetables
se encresparon,                                                             curled into themselves
se hicieron                                                                     made themselves
zarcillos, espadañas,                                                    tendrils, cattails
bulbos conmovedores,                                                rustling bulbs,
en el subsuelo                                                               underground
durmió la zanahoria                                                    the carrot slept
de bigotes rojos,                                                           in its red whiskers,
la viña                                                                             the vineyard
resecó los sarmientos                                                  dried the shoots
por donde sube el vino,                                               from which wine rises,
la col                                                                               brussels sprouts
se dedicó                                                                        devoted themselves
a probarse faldas,                                                         to trying on skirts,
el orégano                                                                      oregano
a perfumar el mundo,                                                  to perfuming the world,
y la dulce                                                                        and the sweet
alcachofa                                                                        artichoke
allí en el huerto,                                                           was there in the orchard
vestida de guerrero,                                                     dressed for war,
bruñida                                                                           burnished
como una granada,                                                        like a grenade,
orgullosa,                                                                        proud,
y un día                                                                            till one day
una con otra                                                                    one on top of the other
en grandes cestos                                                           in big wicker baskets
de mimbre, caminó                                                        it drove
por el mercado                                                               to the market
a realizar su sueño:                                                        to realize its dream:
la milicia.                                                                         the militia.
En hileras                                                                         In the ranks
nunca fue tan marcial                                                     none was more martial
como en la feria,                                                              as in the marketplace,
los hombres                                                                      the men
entre las legumbres                                                         among the vegetables
con sus camisas blancas                                                  with their white shirts
eran                                                                                    were
mariscales                                                                         field marshals
de las alcachofas,                                                             of artichokes,
las filas apretadas,                                                           the close ranks,
las voces de comando,                                                     the commando cries,
y la detonación                                                                 and the detonation
de una caja que cae,                                                         of a falling box,
pero                                                                                    but
entonces                                                                             then
viene                                                                                   Maria
María                                                                                  comes
con su cesto,                                                                      with her basket,
escoge                                                                                 chooses
una alcachofa,                                                                    an artichoke,
no le teme,                                                                         not afraid of it,
la examina, la observa                                                     she examines it, looks at it
contra la luz como si fuera un huevo,                           against the light as if it were an egg
la compra,                                                                          buys it.
la confunde                                                                        mingles it
en su bolsa                                                                         in her bag
con un par de zapatos,                                                     with a pair of shoes
con un repollo y una                                                        with a cabbage and a
botella                                                                                bottle
de vinagre                                                                          of vinegar
hasta                                                                                   until
que entrando a la cocina                                                 coming to the kitchen
la sumerge en la olla.                                                       she plunges it into a pot.
Así termina                                                                        So, in peace,
en paz                                                                                  the struggle
esta carrera                                                                        of this armored vegetable
del vegetal armado                                                           called artichoke
que se llama alcachofa,                                                     ends,
luego                                                                                    later
escama por escama                                                            scale by scale
desvestimos                                                                        we undress
la delicia                                                                              this delicacy
y comemos                                                                          and eat
la pacífica pasta                                                                 the peaceful pulp
de su corazón verde.                                                         of its green heart.

Pablo Neruda                                                                    Translated by Meryl Natchez

I love how he plays with the spiney artichoke as an image of war, all its martial dreams conquered by simple Maria, who comes to market with her basket and isn’t afraid of it. And I love the way the short lines slow the poem down, give single words a certain weight.  The language is very simple yet exquisite.  Of course, translation is an iffy business… One does the best one can.

Poetry and Pastry

Posted on by Meryl in Poetry

I’m reading tonight, Jun 16, at 7:00 PM

Falkirk Cultural Center
1408 Mission Street, San Rafael

as part of the Marin Poetry Center Summer Traveling Show
hosted by Laurel Feigenbaum

Others include:

Joan Gelfand, Alan Cohen, John Hart, James Phoenix and Andrea Freeman

Because I’m reading “Loaves and Fishes” I’m bringing a fruit tart…mango and blueberry—it’s not pear season. So at the very least they’ll be something yummy to eat.

 

Potato towers and red mulch

Posted on by Meryl in Garden

This morning I went out to look at the garden, and a little junco was nibbling under the cucumber—hopefully eating weeds! Can you see it between the plants?

Yesterday was devoted to putting down red mulch and building potato towers. I first read about potato towers in Sunset Magazine (waiting for the dentist!), then saw them on the Bennington Garden Blog. Now they seem to be all the rage. The idea is to put in a bunch of potato pieces and keep adding layers of straw, soil, and compost as the potatoes grow. They grow up instead of sideways, giving a tower of harvestable potatoes.

Everyone likes to try something new, including me. They seem like an appealing, space-saving idea. I like the thought of just reaching in for new potatoes as the rest keep growing. I went to Urban Ore my favorite shopping spot for the garden, and picked up an old wicker hamper for one. I made another one out of a remnant of chicken wire and a bamboo shade.  It took most of the morning, and I remembered the best home improvement advice I ever read. “Never think anything is going to take 15 minutes; it takes 15 minutes to find the screwdriver.” Or in my case, to assemble wire cutters, pliers, scissors and glasses.

The red mulch (according to its label) is “a recent innovation to maximize the effect of reflected light on plant growth…red has been found to enhance the growth and yield of several vegetable crops, including tomatoes.”  I decided to give it a try, especially as the foggy east bay is not the best tomato-growing environment in the world.

 

 

 

 

 

 

First I weeded, then top dressed the plants with compost, then put on the mulch. I had to cut and paste a bit to fit my odd rows, but it went pretty well. We’ll see. I think I’ll put it on the eggplants and cucumbers, too.

And the first baby cucumbers are as cute as any newborn.  Meanwhile, I’ve been eating and giving away lettuce every day, and enjoying the bumper crop of peas.

 

 

Zbigniew Herbert

Posted on by Meryl in Poetry

This Polish poet is one of my favorites. He has many dark poems, having survived the second world war and the subsequent Soviet regime in Poland.  But this is a light, acerbic little prose poem. I disagree with his assessment of the hen, though I love the poem.

The Hen

The hen is the best example of what living constantly with humans leads to.  She has completely lost the lightness and grace of a bird. Her tail sticks up over her protruding rump like a too large hat in bad taste. Her rare moments of ecstasy, when she stands on one leg and glues up her round eyes with filmy eyelids, are stunningly disgusting. And in addition, that parody of song, throat-slashed supplications over a thing unutterably comic: a round, white, maculated egg.
The hen brings to mind certain poets.

More typical is his poem, “Five Men.” This poem astonished me with its power when I first read it, perhaps 40 years ago. In an essay about another poem, Herbert said:

“If a school of literature existed, one of its basic exercises should be the description not of dreams but of objects. Beyond the artist’s reach, a world unfolds–difficult, dark, but real. One should not lose the faith that it can be captured in words…I do not turn to history to draw from it an easy lesson of hope, but to confront my experience with that of others, to acquire something I might call universal compassion, and also a sense of responsibility, responsibility for the state of my conscience.”

This poem seems to me to fulfill that responsibility.

Five Men

1.
They take them out in the morning
to the stone courtyard
and put them against the wall 

five men
two of them very young
the others middle-aged

nothing more
can be said about them

2.
when the platoon
level their guns
everything suddenly appears
in the garish light
of obviousness

the yellow wall
the cold blue
the black wire on the wall
instead of a horizon

that is the moment
when the five senses rebel
they would gladly escape
like rats from a sinking ship

before the bullet reaches its destination
the eye will perceive the flight of the projectile
the ear record the steely rustle
the nostrils will be filled with biting smoke
a petal of blood will brush the palate
the touch will shrink and then slacken

now they lie on the ground
covered up to their eyes with shadow
the platoon walks away
their buttons straps
and steel helmets
are more alive
then those lying beside the wall

3.
I did not learn this today
I knew it before yesterday

so why have I been writing
unimportant poems on flowers
what did the five talk of
the night before the execution

of prophetic dreams
of an escapade in a brothel
of automobile parts
of a sea voyage
of how when he had spades
he ought not to have opened
of how vodka is best
after wine you get a headache
of girls
of fruits
of life

thus one can use in poetry
names of Greek shepherds
one can attempt to catch the color of morning sky
write of love
and also
once again
in dead earnest
offer to the betrayed world
a rose

Zbigniew Herbert
both of these were translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Peter Dale Scott, and are from the Penguin 1968 edition of Zbigniew Herbert Selected Poems,

Peas and poetry

Posted on by Meryl in Food

I saw what looked like an irresitable recipe for fresh pea soup on jfeldt’s blog, Progress and Procrastination. As it’s the season of fresh peas, I decided to try it with excellent results.  It turned out every bit as enchanting a green the original. I made a few modifications to the recipe, so repeat it below. The virtues of this recipe include:

  • takes about 10 minutes start to finish (not counting shelling the peas)
  • is a delectable green color
  • tastes fabulous and is relatively low calorie

Fresh Pea Soup

1 onion, chopped
1 to 2 cloves garlic or ½ a green garlic head, crushed
1 Tbsp olive oil
2 3/4 Cups fresh peas (you can use frozen)
small handful of herbs (I used thyme, lemon verbena and garlic chives)
1 avocado
1 Cup water
1 Tbsp lemon juice
2 tsp fresh ground pepper
1 tsp salt
1 tsp cayenne pepper

Put the olive oil in a saucepan and heat. Add chopped onion and garlic and cook gently till softened but not brown (2-3 minutes) Place frozen peas in on top of the onion and garlic, add herbs, and just cover with water. (I didn’t use vegetable stock because I thought it might ruin the green color.) Bring to a boil until peas are bright green and al dente (about 5 minutes).

Add all to blender with the avocado and 1 cup of water and liquefy. Return puree saucepan and add salt, pepper, cayenne, and lemon juice. Stir constantly until just boiling. Serve warm.   I put a mint leaf on top just for fun. Mint might be a good addition.

Several years ago, I heard an NPR broadcast about Gregor Mendel and wrote this poem about him and his peas and his bees. It occurs to me that I now also have both bees and peas, though not with the same objectives!

Sexing the Pea

Mendel in his monk’s robes strolled
amid hermaphroditic peas, tweezed open
each pea flower keel, snipped filament and anther
and shoved the pollen deep into the womb
of his pocket.  Then, bending to the female
flower parts—not yet sticky, immature—
he twisted over stigma, style and ovary
a calico cap, to protect the pea’s virginity.

Pudgy, stooped above his flowery flock,
he chose the moment and the father strain
for each sweet pea. He touched
each fragile, trembling pistil
with his tiny brush. When the flowers
turned to fruit, he sorted out
three hundred thousand peas.

His single published text, eye-crossed
with figures, was ignored for almost forty years.
But Mendel spent his sun-blessed days
amid the odor of pea blossom,
deep in the unembarrassed sex of flower and bee,
and puzzled out the logic of genetics,
before we had the word for gene.

Meryl Natchez

Abandoned Books

Posted on by Meryl in Prose

One of the best things about writing a blog is that you plunge ever deeper into the great labyrinth of blogs. Today, via Harriet Devine’s blog, I found The Literary Stew, and this meme to which I’ve added a fourth question.  Please answer it below in the comment section or post about it in your blogs and leave a link.

1. What would cause you to stop reading a book?

I start a lot of books—one of the reasons I’m library addict. I abandon them if they bore me, I don’t like the writing style, or I just can’t get into them. Sometimes it’s not the book’s fault, it’s just not the right fit at the moment. Sometimes I can tell there’s going to be too much grief and the writing just isn’t worth it. Usually 50 pages is my cutoff point.

2. Name a book or books you’ve abandoned in the past that you ended up loving later on.

The most significant for me, Madame Bovary. The first time through, I just had no sympathy for the shallow heroine; that changed the second time around. Guess I’ve become increasingly shallow.

3. Name a book you’ve abandoned in the past that you hope to finish someday.

I’ve started Magic Mountain three times. I know it’s a classic. Maybe a John Woods’ translation will do it for me.

4. How often do you stop reading and just skim to the end?

More often than I like to document. I’m impatient, and unless the author is a really good writer, I often find myself flipping along, just to redeem my investment in the characters and their travails.

Anyone have an idea for what we should call this last category? Not exactly abandoned, but not exactly finished, either.

 

Introducing the garden

Posted on by Meryl in Garden

I realized, reading the Bennington Garden Blog this morning that I have neglected to document my miraculous garden. I am lucky to be planting on soil that has been uncultivated for years; it’s rich and full of worms. With the addition of some compost to lighten up the clay, it has produced what seems like instant results. I started planting in February, and now have more lettuce than we can eat (just ready to transplant the third crop of seedlings), snap and snow peas, kale, baby tomatoes, and vigorous corn, tomatillos, cucumber, squash, artichoke, eggplant, edamame and bean plants. I also have first year blueberry bushes, raspberry, and blackberry vines, a young Celeste fig and Hachiya persimmon, and a pepper tree. Here come the photos:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The peas grow visibly taller each day!

These are planted with a technique called Mayan gardening. The corn should be a stalk for the beans, tomatoes or tomatillos, the cucumber provides ground cover.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Can you spot the slug in the lettuce seedlings? I didn’t know it was there till I looked at these.

Here’s the front. You can see the beginning of the labyrinth here:

 

 

Some of the herbs and salad greens in the labyrinth are already going to seed—I’m letting that happen, figuring I’ll have a summer crop later.

 

The garden is a world of pleasure, changing each day.  Soon to come: red mulch for the tomatoes! Stakes for the berries, taller stakes for the peas.

 

Bernd Heinrich

Posted on by Meryl in Philosophical

“The one thing I can confidently say about all this scribbling and note-taking, is that if it wasn’t written down, it didn’t happen, and the more I wrote the more that did happen because this process stirs up ideas.” Bernd Heinrich, naturalist.

I read his quote in a book review in the Wall Street Journal the other day and looked him up. An interesting fellow. It seems to me the perfect rationale for a blog. And yes, the WSJ does have some interesting reviews!

 

http://www.jancannonfilms.com/berndheinrichfilmproposal.htm

The Arrival of the Bee Box

Posted on by Meryl in Poetry

Although I love this poem by Sylvia Plath, in my case it’s more the arrival of the bee egg. My friend Laurie, an amazing creator of natural perfumes among other things, has been keeping bees for several years. She was written up in a new book on Backyard Beekeepers of the Bay Area. I’d been thinking about maybe having bees, and when she told me she had a swarm, I decided to take the plunge.  Laurie directed me to a couple of places in Sebastapol that sell “top bar” hives—easier, less honey than commercial bee boxes.  I went online to Michael Thiele’s site, read what he says about apiculture, and when I saw the Haengekorb, I was hooked. I called Michael, and this happened to be the only hive he had available at the moment, so I arranged to pick it up yesterday. I was a little perturbed when he told me in the email that I might want to cover it with cow dung(!) but I persevered. When Laurie heard I was going, she wanted to come meet Michael (if you look at any of his online videos, you’ll see why).

So we drove up yesterday. It turned out that Leslie, Michael’s wife, helped us, because Michael had a dental emergency. She was terrific, and showed us several hives (one made out of straw (and yes, covered in cow dung) and one made from a hollow log. I asked her if she was familiar with Andy Goldsworthy’s work, and when she said yes, I said “You’re married to the Andy Goldsworthy of bee keeping.” She smiled and said, “I know.”

I asked her about the cow dung, and she said it preserves the hive, and she really didn’t know if was necessary. In any case, on the way home, we passed by a field of cows, and gathered a bucket full of cow plops. It’s a true friend who’s willing to wander a cow pasture and help collect cow dung.  But when I talked to Michael that evening, I asked about it. I wasn’t reluctant to use it if I had to, but it seemed a shame to cover the beautiful straw basket with dung. I was relieved when he said it would be fine to use the Haengekorp as is, and if I want to I could cover it a few years down the line. The cow plops will go into the compost.

In any case, we assembled the hive last night, and this morning at 6 am, before the bees were out, we got the swarm box, and brought it down.  We banged the bees into their new home, added the frames, the cloth and beeswax cover, and the top of the hive.

It went amazingly smoothly.

I was worried that the bees would all want to fly up and it would be hard to assemble frames and coverings on top of them, but they stayed placidly in the bottom of the basket and allowed me to slowly assemble the top of the hive. It was all set up within an hour.

Now the sun is out, the bees are all in their hive, and I am a beekeeper.  Those little dots in the picture are bees. There is something about being around thousands of bees that is very magical. I didn’t feel at all frightened by them. In fact, I went and removed the cheesecloth we’d put around the bottom without my (loaner) bee suit. The bees pay no attention to me.  They are intent on their own concerns.

I can’t say that I share the exact sentiment of Sylvia Plath’s poem, though I’ve always loved it. The menace she feels from the bees, the ambivalence about her control is as different from my experience as a square wood box is from my egg-shaped basket.  Still the imagery is marvelous, and it does convey something of the powerful energy bees emit. As a metaphor for the swarm within, it works perfectly.  This was the first long poem I memorized.

The Arrival of the Beebox — Sylvia Plath

I ordered this, this clean wood box
Square as a chair and almost too heavy to lift.
I would say it was the coffin of a midget
Or a square baby
Were there not such a din in it.

The box is locked, it is dangerous.
I have to live with it overnight
And I can’t keep away from it.
There are no windows, so I can’t see what is in there.
There is only a little grid, no exit.

I put my eye to the grid.
It is dark, dark,
With the swarmy feeling of African hands
Minute and shrunk for export,
Black on black, angrily clambering.

How can I let them out?
It is the noise that appalls me most of all,
The unintelligible syllables.
It is like a Roman mob,
Small, taken one by one, but my god, together!

I lay my ear to furious Latin.
I am not a Caesar.
I have simply ordered a box of maniacs.
They can be sent back.
They can die, I need feed them nothing, I am the owner.

I wonder how hungry they are.
I wonder if they would forget me
If I just undid the locks and stood back and turned into a tree.
There is the laburnum, its blond colonnades,
And the petticoats of the cherry.

They might ignore me immediately
In my moon suit and funeral veil.
I am no source of honey
So why should they turn on me?
Tomorrow I will be sweet God, I will set them free.

The box is only temporary.

I read recently that in her layout of the book Ariel, in which this poem first appeared, it was the final poem of the book. This seems to me such a optimistic statement, because the ending “Tomorrow…I will set them free./The box is only temporary” seems so positive. It confirmed for me that her suicide attempt wasn’t meant to succeed. Of course, with her death, Ted Hughes got to rearrange the book as he felt it should be; she wasn’t around to argue one way or the other.

 

Poetry and Pastry, Thursday, June 16 at 7 pm

Posted on by Meryl in Events

I will be reading with several others at the historic Falkirk Cultural Center, 1408 Mission Street San Rafael. As I have some poems about food, I’m bringing some home baked treats to go along with them.  The reading is part of the Marin Poetry Center’s summer reading series. Hope to see you there.

Host: Laurel Feigenbaum

Readers:
Joan Gelfand
Alan Cohen
Meryl Natchez
James Phoenix
Katherine Crawford
Andrea Freeman

 

 

Louis B. Jones

Posted on by Meryl in Prose

This week I started Louis B. Jones new book, Radiance. I’d been waiting eagerly for it. It’s a rare treat to enter the world of someone who thinks deeply and articulates his thought beautifully (poetically!) while moving you along a compelling story line. Here are two passages.

The first is about the strangeness of women, via the narrator’s teen-age daughter:

“…he hadn’t known what a girl’s graces were until Lotta, nor felt how over years his world was gradually changing shape so that females’ natural secret regnant ascendancy became more impossible  to ignore, not until Lotta, not until he’d started watching a girl take shape from earliest infancy, the fineness of discernment, as well as a soreness, which amounted to a discriminating kind of electromagnetic force, all superpowers in comparison with boys’—and how hard that all was for them, the amazing unremitting meanness of their competition, their fundamental sad practicality, then the encroaching ineluctable weird song and dance of their inferior competence.”

The second describes a carpenter’s belt his wife is wearing:

“The new tool belt from True Value was red, redder than any valentine, its tough nylon webbing lustrous with that almost-lanolin stuff that synthetic hardware-store fabrics have when they’re brand-new and still faintly cense the factory warehouse perfumes of polymerized thermo-plastic.”

Here is a man who is paying attention and has the vocabulary to wake you up and see what he sees. And we’re only at page 13! I could go on, but it would be better if you bought the book and supported this kind of writing.

 

Supervised freedom

Posted on by Meryl in Chickens

Today for the first time I let the chickens into their large, uncovered pen that gives them plenty of grass and bugs to eat.

They’ve been in a small enclosed area since they went outside, about a month ago.  The enclosed area has chicken wire or bird mesh around 2″ x 4″ wire, and is about 5’ x 16’.  It’s covered top, bottom, and sides. Their house is inside and is 3’ x 4’. It’s hard to believe they were once small enough to fit through 2×4″ mesh! They cheerfully but cautiously explored, then went back in to their smaller area after an hour or so.

I stayed out there with them, to make sure they really are too big for the chicken hawk, because a few days after I first settled them in their caged area, I saw a young Sharp-Shinned Hawk or possibly a Cooper’s Hawk (they also call these hawks Chicken Hawks, no surprise) sitting on top of the chicken coop.

It was hardly larger than the chicks (so probably Sharp-Shinned–they’re smaller), but it seemed thoroughly unintimidated by me.

It let me come within 15 feet before it reluctantly moved to a branch slightly further away.

The chicks were huddled in their house.

I did lose one chick the day before I saw the hawk. I started with eight. I went for a walk one afternoon and came back to find only seven. I counted and recounted. Only seven. Then I found a small hole in my wire. I guess one got out, and perhaps was a meal for the hawk or a cat or… Nonetheless, I didn’t try to chase the hawk away. It’s my job to keep them safe, not the hawk’s to refrain from catching one. So they only get supervised freedom for now. As my friend Poppy once said, when we saw a raven grab a baby sparrow from its cliffside nest, “It’s a bird eat bird world.”