Rose Is a Verb

Neo-Georgics

Karen An-hwei Lee

• Publisher: Slant Books
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781639820924
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

A little more than two thousand years ago, the Roman poet Virgil wrote his Georgics, a long poetic sequence about agriculture, suffused with profound reflections on the relationship between humanity, nature, and the divine--and reflecting the political turmoil of his times.California poet Karen An-hwei Lee, inspired by Virgil, has created her own dense, richly-layered collection of "Neo-Georgics, " constituting an extended exploration of such motifs ashappiness, olive groves, vineyards, soil chemistries, the seacoast, and the birth of trees. In Lee's contemporary rendering we confront an environment blighted by our carbon footprint; advancements in agricultural technology and genetic engineering; the digital age; fossil fuel transportation; and vanishing bees. Rose Is a Verb explores the ancient tradition of agrarian labor, including tilling the soil andinterpreting weather signs and war omens. The poems flash with verbal ingenuity and mind-bending allusions--challenging the heart and mind but repaying slow, careful readings many times over. A meditation on the natural environment, this collection serves as a biomythography of procreation and a reflection on the meaning of happiness.

II.

On the Beauty of Modified Fruitage

SHIELDING A GIRL, HER DYNAMITE TOPAZ SOUL

Shield a girl from an exploding grenade—

topaz does not melt, immune to dynamite.

On fever in adiabatic transfer of work as energy

heated to flash point.

Santa Anas out of a high desert, a fever—

dwarf-willow arroyos and vales swept to the sea.

Wake in the night, disoriented—

wind-thrashed eucalyptus.

Which saint do I miss, Santa Ana or Santa Fe,

the coastal mesa or sagebrush steppes?

Gift of healing, one of the charismata

of Spiritus Sanctus, kisses the flatlands.

On warning seabirds of electric storms—

is this a form of cormorant’s prayer?

How do we send a love-offering?

Which of the ordained days are we in now?

BLAZING HONEY IN FOUR LANGUAGES

Nine noons I awaited

a cherrywood harp, alabazana—

river birch sound-box, lemon-oiled,

glowing on chamois folded by a luthier’s

angel lying on her side in a mirror-box

shouldered by a courier. Afar, brushfires

fizzled after rainfall. Is happiness

a pear in a compote of melancholy,

a rain-rutted road to girlhood lessons,

a rust-colored brook reeking of gasoline fumes,

a gypsy moth fanning a Japanese architect’s

fish-shaped house with a porthole

for the eye, a cherrywood tree

hand-split, planed, buffed for praise?

Happiness mixes blancmange

out of a carrageenan sky over lacquered persimmon,

Santa Lucia fir, magenta crape-myrtle,

silver dollars of a eucalyptus vaporized by liquid sun,

a magnesium torch flaming thousands of degrees

underwater, cattleya orchid of blanched fire,

a botanical monograph of floral cyanotypes,

silver bromide at one end of the room

or a hand-strung zither on the other.

Brushfires fizzle eleven miles away

as a girl spells honey in four l...

Table of contents

• I. On Love in Millenial Weather
• II. On the Beauty of Modified Frutiage
• III. On Vanquished Asian Cities
• IV. On Biomythography of Vanishing Bees
• V. Epilogue: An Echolalia of the Unadorned
• Notes
• Works Consulted
• Acknowledgments