In which there is Gardening in the Tropics
- Reading, books 2016, 156.
153. Gardening in the Tropics, by Olive Senior, 1995, is a volume of poetry. I'd forgotten how much I enjoy reading Ms Senior's work, which is often deceptively simple in form but has multiple layers of meaning: such as in The Immovable Tenant which might be a narrative poem about an elderly tenant and her mean landlord, or might be about the Caribbean and the US, and works perfectly either way. While at the opposite end of the poetic spectrum is the sparsely splendid Cat's Cradle about loving a fisherman. Her poem on Jean Rhys in Devon has a memorable image of sheep being sea-foam on the green waves of the hills. The quotes below aren't representative because it's impossible to extract meaningful snippets from Olive Senior's more stylistically complex works so these are all from poems with shorter lines and more readily apparent themes. (5/5)
• Caribbean Basin Initiative [part 2]
No sailor am I.
I was farming
till my seed
failed to yield
fell on stony
ground. I cried:
What is harder
than stone?
Never knew
at the time
the answer is:
Water.
• From Meditation on Red [about Jean Rhys, with a "tight" = both "watertight" and "drunk" pun]
for that craft
you launched
is so seaworthy
tighter
than you'd ever been
dark voyagers
like me
can feel free
to sail.
• From Pineapple
With yayama
fruit of the Antilles,
we welcomed you
to our shores,
not knowing in
your language
"house warming"
meant "to take
possession of"
and "host"
could so easily
turn hostage.
This entry was originally posted at http://spiralsheep.dreamwidth.org/596618.html and has
comments Please comment there using OpenID.
153. Gardening in the Tropics, by Olive Senior, 1995, is a volume of poetry. I'd forgotten how much I enjoy reading Ms Senior's work, which is often deceptively simple in form but has multiple layers of meaning: such as in The Immovable Tenant which might be a narrative poem about an elderly tenant and her mean landlord, or might be about the Caribbean and the US, and works perfectly either way. While at the opposite end of the poetic spectrum is the sparsely splendid Cat's Cradle about loving a fisherman. Her poem on Jean Rhys in Devon has a memorable image of sheep being sea-foam on the green waves of the hills. The quotes below aren't representative because it's impossible to extract meaningful snippets from Olive Senior's more stylistically complex works so these are all from poems with shorter lines and more readily apparent themes. (5/5)
• Caribbean Basin Initiative [part 2]
No sailor am I.
I was farming
till my seed
failed to yield
fell on stony
ground. I cried:
What is harder
than stone?
Never knew
at the time
the answer is:
Water.
• From Meditation on Red [about Jean Rhys, with a "tight" = both "watertight" and "drunk" pun]
for that craft
you launched
is so seaworthy
tighter
than you'd ever been
dark voyagers
like me
can feel free
to sail.
• From Pineapple
With yayama
fruit of the Antilles,
we welcomed you
to our shores,
not knowing in
your language
"house warming"
meant "to take
possession of"
and "host"
could so easily
turn hostage.
This entry was originally posted at http://spiralsheep.dreamwidth.org/596618.html and has
comments Please comment there using OpenID.