My remembrance of pioneering poet Nick Carbó is up at the Poetry Foundation website: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/1683593/ang-tunay-na-lalaki-the-real-man-remembering-nick-carbo
I believe my essay also provides a look at a slice of poetry and Fil-Am history not known to many so hopefully it interests readers.
As I've mentioned here, every few weeks I do a poetry column for my local newspapers. I cover something that's relevant locally, and then have the coverage help inspire a new poem (my current way of an Oulipian restraint).
This week I came out with my fifth column. It's also the first to present another poet's poem which I hope to do more in the future. For this issue, I'm grateful to Aileen Cassinetto whose hay(na)ku on the tariffs issue and roses helped inspire my own poem "The Ferocity of Flowers."
My editor, btw, once observed (thankfully) that I clearly work to make my poems of interest (& accessible?) to readers who might not pay attention otherwise to poetry. He apparently has read my other or earlier poetry which is more, cough, arduous. I am amused. Amusement is one of my favorites muses.
On Every January 20, I Consider
Cherry blossoms or
magnolias—to die petal
by petal or whole
In Full Bloom: How to Unpack the Love Language of Perishables as Import
Duties Wilt the Fragile Trade of Flowers
(By Aileen Cassinetto)
Tariff
cut roses,
disrupt love unseasonably
The Ferocity of Flowers
The tree’s blossoming
is so generous
the dogwood’s flower
clusters evoke
a pink waterfall
as they sway down
from treetop to ground,
a resplendence
that draws you nearer
to their company.
Of course you lower
your face closer
to the blooms
shimmering with dew.
You are reminded
of that pink simile:
“pink as the lip
of the sea-shell.”
Then you recall “pink
as the rose in Galatea’s
cheek, “as English
poet Alfred Austin put it.
And “pink as the cheeks
of sweet-and-twenty,”
as observed by American
novelist Temple Bailey;
unexpectedly, the fictionist
moves your mind to more
American history. You recall
how the United States
and Japan traded dogwood
saplings and cherry blossom
trees in a 1912-1915 flower
exchange. Still, all but one
of the dogwoods in Tokyo
didn’t survive the subsequent
souring of the two countries’
relations. But why focus now
on how the dogwoods didn’t
survive World War II?
Focus instead on the cherry
blossom trees surviving
to be the star attraction
for Washington D.C.’s
annual spring celebration,
the National Cherry Blossom
Festival. Despite death
by politics, in 2012
the United States sent
3,000 dogwood saplings
to Japan to commemorate
the 100th anniversary
of their 1912-1915 flower
exchange. Someone once
observed, “Flowers are
ferocious.” Ferociously,
flowers insist that something
is itself, regardless of
contexts applied by outsiders.
Flowers insist that we realize:
the inescapability
of a flower’s beauty
is an excellent definition
of gorgeous Integrity.
