Sherry Chandler

Nature in Legend and Story (NILAS)

My Fall 2004 NILAS Newsletter just came in. At first I thought it was a little late but then I realized it was operating on poetry publication time. This reckoning is somewhat similar to my grandfather’s sun time — or at any rate to the way he judged noon by the sun when I would follow him to the field all those years ago. And like the leftover bacon and biscuits in the field lunch, this newsletter tastes all the better for the wait.

It looks unassuming – just a sheaf of letter paper stapled in the upper right corner like any photocopied office document. But guest editor Patricia Monaghan, a Pushcart Prize winner, has called on poets from Alaska to Mississippi, from Vermont to California, and over the sea to Ireland to comment on the theme “Flowers, Fruits, and Seeds.” The result is a collection that Lexington poet Ann Neuser Lederer aptly describes as “a treat.”

There is a considerable Kentucky connection – Ann is included, as am I, and also Frankfort poet and mentor of poets, Normandi Ellis. Ann Fisher-Wirth, whose chapbook The Trinket Poems was published in Wind #90, also has a poem in the collection.

My NILAS Newsletter poem, posted as this week’s entry on the Poetry page, concerns my ongoing battle with poison ivy. Says Ann,

Many familar chords: I’ve tried kettles of boiling water, in addition to the garbing up that you describe. But after a bad rash, now mainly avoidance. It’s tangled so with the regular ivy and some odd small ground loving morning glories, that I’m now inclined to let the whole mess do what it wants to.

Here is a glimpse into Ann’s own chemical-free garden from NILAS:

Harvesting

Right before the first killing frost,
I gathered the last tiny tomatoes to dry,
now sweeter from cold, and nostalgia.

I rescued the plumes of Russian sage,
like blue breaths sucked inward, then held.
As I plucked the laced dill, her seeds
escaped among the elfin mints.

I brooded on my harvest, as though it were
my own tall boy
chasing his footprints at the ocean’s edge,
just as when he was a toddler.

I sat down with pride at my outdoor table,
with bees made restless by their premonitions.

The purple grapes glowing
in the late sunshine
need not be mentioned
as I did not really grow them,
nor the pumpkin I would add to complete
the appropriate palette.

Related posts:

More on NILAS

The nature of the short story revisited

On the political nature of redress

On the nature of meter

Don’t Write What You Know

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