Comments on: Legerdemain

By: Dave

Dave — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 14:12:29 +0000

christine – Thanks. I’m not sure it’s so much a matter of deliberately mixing science and magic as forgetting that a difference exists.

Annamari – I’m glad you liked the original, and that it still speaks to someone so urban.

(For archival purposes, the “skeleton” to which Annamari refers was posted in the comments here, and links to the responses may be found here.)

By: Annamari

Annamari — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 01:57:19 +0000

yes, I read it after I wrote mine on the skeleton provided.(thanks, great skeleton, btw.)
the imagery is great and it holds all the mistery and magic of “wild life” for this city girl that I am.
I avoid growing plants for fear that I will kill them – I feel so foreign and clumsy around them. Still your poem made me feel almost as I was the tree…

By: christine

christine — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 21:56:41 +0000

Hmmm, I don’t know how I missed this one. Lazy blogger.

The mixture of science and magic draws me right in. I like how you get inside of nature and offer the reader a unique perspective.

By: Dave

Dave — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 14:27:05 +0000

Photosynthesis in general, yes. The “hand” is a hand of cards — all the leaves on a tree.

I had a post on slimemolds a while back: here.

By: David Harmon

David Harmon — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 01:10:36 +0000

Did you mean something specific by “sun-sugar”, or were you just riffing on photosynthesis in general?

I was dealt a singular hand,

Umm… philodendron?

I think fungal mycelia are cool… there are underground fungal masses in China that are apparently the largest single living things anywhere, stretching for miles under the landscape. (China also features occasional “slime molds” [moving blobs of coalesced bacteria] the size of a small dog….)

By: LaurenceMcBeth

LaurenceMcBeth — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 20:04:54 +0000

Excellent wordsmithery and horticultural science…genius..

By: gautami tripathy

gautami tripathy — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 16:52:53 +0000

You took me back to my botany classes in my senior school year. And that was a long time back.

By: Dave

Dave — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 14:30:35 +0000

…deb – Wow, I’ve just been reading the reviews of Linda Bierds’ poetry at Amazon and wondering why I haven’t run across it before. I’ve often though about trying to become that sort of poet; very glad to hear someone’s already managing to pull it off.

Dick – Glad you think so; thanks.

CGP – The “bittering…” part was a later edit, after I rejected “one-handed applause” as trite and tangential. The ability of trees to change the chemical composition of their leaves at a moment’s notice – often after signals received from neighbors through the “wood-wide web” – is much more miraculous, I thought.

Linda – Good, I’m glad that helped. Thanks for commenting.

bev – Thanks! We’re a little ways south of the last glacial ice sheet here, of course, so the tree in this poem is more likely to be from your neck of the woods than ours.

By: bev

bev — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 12:21:20 +0000

Below ground I have discovered
the prosthetic tooth of a glacier,
round & granitic, & I hold it
like hard candy in my mind

wow. loved those lines.
super poem, dave.

By: Linda Jacobs

Linda Jacobs — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 11:27:58 +0000

Love the “conjurer’s robe” and “sun sugar.” Thanks for the explanation, too; it helped me understand the poem better.