Bittersweet Nightshade

Bittersweet nightshade, climbing nightshade, solanum dulcumara. All these delightful names refer to the same plant, which is a plant that has apparently invaded my woods.

The names conjure up the image of a bearded apothecary or wise woman crushing things with a mortar and pestle, muttering recipes like incantations. It's the sort of plant that would have figured in my multi-volumed epic fantasies I was always writing as a teen. (Oh, fine - also in my early twenties, I admit it. Umm . . . and mid-twenties.)

I first noticed the flowers in the summer, blooming all through the woods beautifully, like shooting stars. By autumn they had grown into tall purpling vines, and the berries were shifting shades of orange and red, and I was getting worried at their prolificacy and how they seemed to be strangling everything in their path. In the winter I began pulling down the winding darkened vines off the maples and hacking them at the base with my machete. Though I've since discovered that aside from poison, there isn't much you can do against this plant. As long as I can keep it out of my garden, I don't think I'll try any intensive eradication efforts.

On another subject entirely: In an attempt to combat that sick feeling of media overload as well as the inevitable February-blues, I've resurrected my 2009 New Year's resolution to memorize poetry. I've begun this time around with The Bearded Oaks, by Robert Penn Warren.

I've never been a genius at decoding poetry, but I've always loved reading it. Beautiful, precise language thrills me. In college I would often only gain a more concrete understanding of poetry in the process of writing papers on it, and now I find the understanding comes from memorization. In committing the words to memory the themes arise, repetitions or echoes surface, and layers of meaning are peeled back.

I think we are poetry-starved, malnourished from lack of good words. Stephen Fry wrote something to the effect that poetry is the last reserve against the shoddy, impatient, and shallow. So true! Dense with meaning, each word chosen with such delicious care. You read poetry differently than anything else. Skimming it is a crime, you must linger. And then the words linger with you.

Edgar Lee Masters' Lucinda Matlock slays me. It is deceptively simple and apparently unemotional: but the ending packs the biggest wallop. "Degenerate sons and daughters", Lucinda suddenly preaches - but no, you must read it for yourselves, I won't give anything away.

Then there is Gerard Manley Hopkins' Pied Beauty:
"Glory be to God for dappled things"
and the poem is crammed with words that you want to gather about you and dive in, like a pile of leaves. I've memorized several poems by him; I find that his lines arise spontaneously, like a prayer, often when I am out revelling in nature, or lines from his darker poems emerge in dark moods, shaping them into something better.

In other news, the feet are itchy again, and the seed of travel is germinating. More on that in my next post.