November 9, 2017
We had yellow leaves, white pumpkins and red rose hips this week. Time to expand the palette. Root vegetables (and other fall crop) will lend their saturated colors, providing opportunity to go the farmer’s market to photograph and to share a poem that spoke to me for years.
If you ever need a thoughtful gift for a friend struck with serious illness I recommend Tisha Turk’s small volume of poetry Coming out Alive. Turk teaches at the University of Minnesota with a research focus on popular videography; a life threatening illness in 2003 produced her first volume of poems; they tell stories.
https://www.library.wisc.edu/parallelpress/pp-catalog/poetry-series/2003-2/getting-out-alive/
Some are directly related to issues of how to cope with illness, some are indirectly related to themes of how to survive any number of psychological or physical impairments. They are pragmatic, hopeful, sometimes wise. (I realize that just like I prefer paintings that tell stories I also tend towards narrative poetry. I wonder what’s that all about.)
In any case, here’s to root vegetables. And toughness. And shared pain. To those who listen.
And here comes the fun part:
Go make that soup!!!
Deb Meyer
Root veggies are the best! I love to roast them with a very good olive oil and sea salt. They are divine to eat by themselves or I throw in a few gold potatoes when roasting them and serve alone or over a beautiful saffron rice! A glass of Chardonnay and one has a delicious dinner! Thanks for sharing, the poem really touched me.
Sara Lee
If I hadn’t seen/heard that carrot clarinet with my own eyes/ears, I wouldn’t have believed it! Affecting poem. Good pics. Did YOU make the soup???!!!
Philip Bowser
Those colors were exactly what I needed to pick me up today! Also, just bought Ms. Turk’s book of poetry.
Thank you!
Martha Ullman West
Particularly loved the photos of the artichokes (purple!) and leeks, and to inject a little levity here, I thought of Bea Lillie being censured for singing a song that went “So she sits among the cabbages and peas, ” so she changed it to “So she sits among the cabbages and leeks.”
Which is all by way of saying that the poem really got to me, particularly in light of the bodies found yesterday close to the McLeay Blvd entrance to Forest Park, where my recently deceased friend walked her dogs.
I can testify to the deliciousness of Friderike’s leek and potato soup.