THE BIG POND OF NATURE POETICS

How did Anselm Hollo know I adore Radiant Finns? Because a most pleasant surprise awaited me at my country road mailbox yesterday: a package from Anselm Hollo containing his translations of two Finnish writers:

The Edge of Europe / A Kinetic Image by Pentti Saarikoski

and

One And Twenty by Paavo Haavikko

A generous gift, and from a poet I've never met -- but highly respect! I can't wait to dig in fully, and of course I've already started. And this passage from the Translator's Note to Saarikoski's book really resonated:

Saarikoski had withdrawn from the limelight of two decades of being an only-too-enthusiastic big fish in a small pond. With his partner, Norwegian-Swedish writer Mia Berner, he established himself in an old house on an island just off the west coast of Sweden and cultivated his own backyard in a typically troll-like way, superimposing the rich and various, wild and wooly landscape of his mind on the surrounding countryside with its mountain ridges, petroglyphs, caves, and harbors....

Said passage resonates, not because I consider myself a "big fish" (or because what passes as "poetry world" so often strikes one as a small pond) but, given what I'm trying to do here on the mountain with Galatea. Today, I checked my brand-spanking new culvers beneath a new gravel road/parking lot on the property and was very pleased to see them working and being effective against this week's raging storms. From the four culvers (which you Peeps might recall I'd financed by bartering some poetry books - grin), fountain-ous streams of water cascaded over wet rocks and leaves to continue down the fountain into a seasonal waterfall visible from the road. There, too, does Poetry lie and lays.

And speaking of lies and lays, here's my latest list of Relished W(h)ines:

PUBLICATIONS:
SOME HAY, poems by Lars Palm

SELECTED POEMS OF GABRIELA MISTRAL, Translated by Ursula K. Le Guin (University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 2003)

PART, PART EUPHRATES, poems by Arpine Konyalian Grenier

CLEANING THE MIRROR: SELECTED AND NEW POEMS by Joel Chace

THE BIRD CATCHER, poems by Marie Ponsot

HAPPY NEW YEAR PROSE POEMS CARD by Mark Lamoreaux

MARY OLIVER POEM HOLIDAY BROADSIDE published/distributed (grin) by Aimee Nezhukumatathil

MAY/BE, poems by Jill Stengel

SCHOOLCHILDREN, investigative journalism by Tracy Kidder

THE LONG WALK: THE TRUE STORY OF A TREK TO FREEDOM, memoir by Slavomir Rawicz

IN A FAR COUNTRY: THE TRUE STORY OF A MISSION, A MARRIAGE, A MURDER, AND THE REMARKABLE REINDEER RESCUE OF 1898 by John Taliaferro

WOODSWOMAN: LIVING ALONE IN THE ADIRONDACK WILDERNESS, memoir by Anne Labastille

DAKOTA HOME, novel by Debbie Macomber

ALWAYS DAKOTA, novel by Debbie Macomber

REMEMBERED, novel by Tamara Alexander

CARRIE'S STORY and SAFE WORD by Molly Weatherfield (I checked out these two self-described "erotic S/M novels" at Ron Silliman's recommendation, viz a footnote to one of his posts -- I was curious as to how theory and sex intersect, having explored this once through my own homage to Dominique Aury; CARRIE'S STORY is more effective for being less didactic, always an occupational hazard when theory is so overtly involved. I guess the porn uptake to "Show, don't tell" is "Embody, don't theorize". This parenthetical is shared for Moi amusement, but also hopefully for yours.)


WINES:
1998 Jacquesson Fils L'Independance Des Philippines
2006 Oberon cabernet NV
1999 Fox Creek McLaren Vale Reserve Shiraz
2004 Blanc Fume de Pouilly Didier Dageneau
2000 Dom Francois Raveneau Montee de Tonnerre Chablis Premier Cru
2001 Chateau de Beaucastel Chateauneuf-de-Pape
1989 Rocche Dei Menzoni Barolo Riserva
2005 Pavi pinot noir NV
1992 Ridge Montebello
2005 Davenport Pinot Noir
2005 Puligny Montrachet
1990 Dom Perignon
1989 Paolo Scavino Bric del Fiasc
2005 Donn Hoff Hermin Holle Brucke Riesling Auslese
2000 Behrens & Hitchcock Chien Lunatique
1989 Ch. Cantemerle
1992 Ravenswood Pickberry