Sister Arts: Gardens, Poems, Art, Community

Poems in the Garden: Little Sparta

Today's post was inspired by a comment from a U.K. reader, Jerome Fletcher.  Mr. Fletcher pointed me to the Scottish poet Ian Hamilton Finlay, who first gained renown in the 1960s as a practitioner of concrete poetry.  Concrete poetry is the kind in which the layout and typography are part of the poem's meaning, so that it is a visual as well as linguistic object.  Here is one of Finlay's "poster poems," called "Acrobats:"

Its language not only describes but enacts tumbling, rendering the materiality of words concrete.

But sometimes Finlay (who died in 2006) actually makes poems out of concrete, or stone, or wood.  At Little Sparta, the garden he created in the Pentland Hills near Edinburgh with his wife and collaborator Sue Finlay, garden spaces are designed around sculptural pieces engraved with poems.  (These great photos by Andrew Lawson are all from the Little Sparta Trust website.)

In this way, Little Sparta (so named in contrast to nearby Edinburgh, "the Athens of the North," with whom Finlay had been in decades-long conflict over issues of zoning and taxes) participates in a long tradition of poet-philosophers' gardens going back to classical times and epitomized in the eighteenth century by William Shenstone's The Leasowes.

Finlay's themes include pre-Socratic views of nature, the French Revolution, World War II, and the sea.  (Click on these horizontally-oriented shots to see them at full width.)

He works with master stonemasons and woodcarvers to produce virtuoso works of art.

Little Sparta is open to the public and I can't wait to visit it.

The Blush of Summer: Guest Blogger Richard Morrison

I'm delighted to welcome to Sister Arts my first guest blogger,  poet, photographer and editor Richard Morrison.  In this exquisite post, a prose poem with pictures, he introduces the floral and human delights of his Minneapolis garden.  Enjoy.

Forget the nearly naked boy next door as he stretches on the front lawn, preparing for his evening run around the lake.  He's an easy distraction from pulling up crabgrass. Suddenly it's summer in Minneapolis, ushered in by a week of thunderstorms and high humidity. Bare skin and endless endless peonies.

They've peaked, and demand harvesting, their heads heavy with rainwater, stems bowed over, snapped, hanging from the edge of their wire cages.  The twenty-somethings come and go, emerging fresh and eager in their running gear, returning in the twilight, torsos gleaming with sweat. Their appearances are fleeting.

 More enduring are the bearded irises, which have finally established themselves in the boulevard. They've lasted for weeks, having prevailed through the first heat wave as well as late-night revelers staggering back to their cars. The last sentinels of spring, but far more sensual than stoic. Their stalks rose from faux-tropical leaves, and reared up heads of yellow, white, and one variety endowed with every possible hue of purple.  Elaborate, frilled, furry, they are the epitome of perversity. Their upper petals erect and penetrable, while the lower ones hang down and display their "beards," attempting to lure in pollinators.

Garden flowers are masters of sublimation.

 We have a new neighbor in the apartments next door.  He's just moved in with his girlfriend, and they're an incredibly sexy pair.  Yet when he comes up the sidewalk and finds me fretting over the creeping thyme or wrestling with the garden hose, his eyes and smile are wide, genuine with possibility. 

What's different about this year's garden? We've ventured headlong into the cultivation of tomatoes, and now that all the beds are filled --  front and back, north and south -- I've learned the pleasures of digging things back up and rearranging them. But I look forward to nothing more than the return of the dahlias. Distinct and flamboyant is each and every bloom.  The first one to arrive goes by the name of "Boom Boom Red."

They’ll carry us all the way to first frost.

 

Shallow Pot Succulents

According to Typepad Help, my recent travails with sideways pictures have to do with a painful interaction between the iPhone and Typepad.  I have saved these photos in a smaller format in the hopes that they will consent to appear right side up.

Madge bought three small succulents for the pot on our backyard table.

Wow, it's sideways.  Okay, we'll have to try another fix.  In the meantime, these are:  Aloe vera

whose sap is of course great for cuts, burns, and other medical uses;

Gymnocalycium mihanovichii "Hibotan" (I kid you not):

and Devils' Tongue Barrel Cactus:

Madge was attracted to the barrel cactus by its beautiful bloom.  Guess what!  When she got it home, it turned out that Home Depot and GLUED ON an ARTIFICIAL FLOWER to sell the plant!  It doesn't bloom until October or November.  Madge performed surgery and here's our unadorned plant, waiting to bloom at the proper time (and probably sideways):