Earth Day

Yesterday, April 22nd, was Earth Day, but I didn’t do anything especially earth-friendly. In the evening I attended a lecture at Worcester’s College of the Holy Cross by Michael Pollan, Professor of Journalism at UC-Berkeley. An author of well-received books and articles about plants, agriculture, food, and the environment, Professor Pollan was also an effective speaker.

A couple years ago, I read his Botany of Desire, which I found fascinating, but I haven’t yet read his two latest works, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, published in 2006, and In Defense of Food, published earlier this year. Therefore, I shall refrain from commenting on them. Don’t you hate it when people critique books they haven’t even read??! Suffice it to say that the former work is an indictment of our modern system of food production, while the latter focuses on issues of diet and health.

At Holy Cross, Professor Pollan spoke on the phenomenon he termed “nutritionism” and how it has corrupted our relationship with food. As you know from my previous posts, I love food, so I was more than happy to listen to him talk about eating. And fortunately for us in the audience, he was well-informed, engaged, gracious, and personable.

On my way home, I had to stop for gas (sigh). I paid $3.45/gallon for regular, the most I’ve ever paid in my life. Maybe this is an appropriate Earth Day commentary: listed below are the prices for Regular at various gas stations on my way from and to Amherst and Worcester.

  • Citgo – $3.46
  • Exxon – $3.43
  • Getty -$3.49
  • Gulf – $3.49
  • Hess – $3.49
  • Mobil – $3.46
  • Shell – $3.47
  • Sunoco – $3.45

Poetry Month

April is National Poetry Month! Who knew? And who cares?

We all do! To encourage us to acknowledge the importance of poetry in our lives, the citizens of my hometown have been asked to participate in a community project: we will each select a treasured poem, or write one, and submit it for publication in a volume titled North Brookfield’s Favorite Poems: A Town Collection Vol II.

I’m not a poetry fan–I’m more partial to prose, perhaps due to some innate unease with imagery and nuance. In other words, I don’t have a life-list of hundreds of poems I really love. So in less than 24 hours after hearing about the project, I produced the following list of ten poems I’m considering for submission. In alphabetical order by poet’s name, they are:

  • W. H. Auden, “September 1, 1939”
  • Matsuo Basho, “Whippoorwill Haiku”
  • Wendell Berry, “A Timbered Choir”
  • C. P. Cavafy, “Ithaka”
  • Mahmoud Darwish, “Remainder of a Life”
  • Willem Kloos, “Sonnet”
  • Federico Garcia Lorca, “Rider’s Song”
  • W. S. Merwin, “Fox Sleep”
  • Ozcan Yalim, “Inside-Outside”
  • Adam Zagajewski, “Try to Praise the Mutilated World”

By the May 1st deadline, I’ll have to pick one of these and write a paragraph or so about why the poem is important to me. Stay tuned. . .

Now, does anything strike you about these choices? Hmm, for one thing, there are no women represented. Do I have a subconscious preference for the DWM (Dead White Male) literary tradition? But no, there’s the Japanese poet (thank goodness for the seemingly accessible haiku form), and a few of these guys are gay, so I’ve got that gender thing covered. And seven of the ten did not write in English, so maybe my tastes are not that conventional after all.

If you’d like to read the text of any of the listed poems, please email me or leave me a comment. Due to copyright infringement issues, I will not post them in this blog.

Note from the sponsor: This program is supported in part by a grant from the North Brookfield Cultural Council, a local agency that is supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency.