Renaissance of the Earth in Verse: Living Methods


Findings: Keeping Poetic Records


Through poetry, Living Methods writers created “porous” maps of the Kinney Center as a physical and textual site: not just a place-to-write, but a place formed and reformed by writing. Each writer documented their ongoing relationship with a location of their choosing on the Center’s grounds, a place they felt drawn to investigate through poetry.





Barbara Johnson



Ode to South Facing Forms



“Of Propagating Fruit Trees,

mark one coast of every Tree,

either East, West, North, or South, as you please;

that when you plant them again,

you may remember to plant that marked side to the same coast it tended unto before:

which was antiently advised by Virgil.”

What happens when one has been transplanted  

By an itinerant post WWII family

Searching for sustainability.

Tending instead

To the West, Indiana, California…                                                                                           

and to the North, Wisconsin…

and then to the East?  New York, Connecticut.                                                         

Might the resulting fruit,

If sacrificing sweetness,

And likely coming later

have a more complex flavor?



    Barbara Johnson, Messages in the Orchard, ink drawing.


Statement


The small orchard of Apple Trees captured my attention as the Poetry Class first toured the Kinney Center. They appeared to be line dancing, leaning to the South, worshiping the sun. There is a balanced beauty in conformation, birds in flight or synchronized swimmers, but it isn't for everybody. This was the result of my reflection and time spent just outside the Center, drawing and eventually building a poem. It was necessary for survival that I step out of conformation, step out of line, to question and counter the forces of natural selection as best I could, and stay alive to forge a path unique to me.

“Ode to the South Facing Forms” was my result.

The books chosen for us by Jeff Goodhind luckily included The Propagation of Fruit Trees. At the Center I reflected on my life, and that represented by the landscape- sometimes wild but also in places “cultivated.” The latter spoke to me of the manmade world as an ordered matrix- like animal husbandry. To get the most out of life forms- control the present and future, and not be open to accidents that leave the door open, even a bit, and let other light in for something new and different or even ancient - without a QR Code or $ sign. By leaving ourselves porous and open to connect with nature in the landscape and in the light we can tune into our higher pre or non-husbanded selves.