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Contents (60)
  1. Garden Physic
  2. The Yard Wants What the Yard Wants
  3. Plants Reduced to the Idea of Plants
  4. Plants Further Reduced to the Idea of Plants
  5. The Garden Body: A Florilegium
  6. Where Horsetail Intersects String
  7. Equisetum hyemale (Rough Horsetail)
  8. Ferns and Fern Allies
  9. Catkin-Bearing Trees and Shrubs
  10. Violet
  11. Viola
  12. White Flower II
  13. Root of Scarcity
  14. Corn Crowfoot, Corn Buttercup
  15. Grasscloth
  16. Grasscloth (Millefleur)
  17. Wallpaper
  18. William Morris in His Disappointment Garden
  19. Floral Correspondences
  20. My Darling,
  21. Dear,
  22. My Dear Love,
  23. My Dear,
  24. My Darling,
  25. My Dear Love,
  26. Oh Darling,
  27. O’ My Love,
  28. My My My,
  29. My Own Own Darling,
  30. My Dear Love,
  31. Dearest,
  32. Darling,
  33. De Materia Medica
  34. THE CONTENTS
  35. THE OATH
  36. THE DEDICATION
  37. SO BLOOMS
  38. Prelude
  39. Flowers of Brass [Book 5.88]
  40. Habitat
  41. Origins of the Poem
  42. So Blooms—
  43. So Blooms—
  44. ’Struth—
  45. “Pick me … ”
  46. “Pick me … ”
  47. So Blooms the Aromatics
  48. Near Running Water, Streams, and Creeks
  49. So Blooms the Garden of Creatures of Land and Creatures of Sea
  50. APPENDIX A
  51. APPENDIX B
  52. APPENDIX C
  53. APPENDIX D
  54. APPENDIX D (1)
  55. APPENDIX E
  56. APPENDIX E (1)
  57. APPENDIX E (2)
  58. Notes and Sources
  59. Index
  60. Acknowledgments

16. A 4-part mohair colorway of violet and columbine.

17. Daffodil-, willow bough-, and rambling rose-printed cotton.

18. Acorn embossed on silk velvet.

19. Medieval designs with sunflowers and daisies.

20. Dyes as old as Pliny: chestnut, plum, saffron, madder.

APPENDIX E (2)

Yard Goods; Remnants

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Persian shield

Let this suffice …

Notes and Sources

“The Garden Body”: Number 6 incorporates some lines from and references to Erasmus Darwin’s “The Botanic Garden.” In number 7, “Red as any rose” is from Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 2. In number 10, the viola organista was a musical instrument designed (but never constructed) by Leonardo da Vinci. The writings of Nicholas Culpeper echo throughout this sequence, however his work has had an inestimable influence on all of Garden Physic.

“Equisetum hyemale (Rough Horsetail)”: The photograph that this poem responds to can be found in Karl Blossfeldt, The Alphabet of Plants (Munich: Schirmer Art Books, 2007).

“Grasscloth (Millefleur)”: Scroll, Littlescroll, Flora, Sistine, and Trinitas are names of William Morris patterns.

“Wallpaper”: Poppy and Wreath are names of William Morris patterns.

“William Morris in His Disappointment Garden”: Little Chintz and Corncockle are names of William Morris patterns.

“Floral Correspondences”: In “My Darling,” the first poem of this series, “Suns sink on suns” is from Erasmus Darwin’s “The Botanic Garden.”

“Pedanius Dioscorides in His Backyard Plot”: “crypt of roots and endings” is from number IV of Geoffrey Hill’s Mercian Hymns (London: André Deutsch, 1971).

“Gazetteer of the Backyard”: In Part 1.1, “Heat confined on the Earth by the Air” is from Erasmus Darwin’s “The Botanic Garden.” In Part 1.4, “thrice the brindled catbird’s mewed” is a variation on a line from Macbeth.

“Appendix D (1)”: In entry number 4 of the Legend, “Darnel, and all the idle weeds that grow” is from King Lear.

…

Numerous works were essential to the writing of Garden Physic, most notably:

Pedanius Dioscorides (c. 40–90 AD), de Materia Medica. Various versions of this work can be found online (e.g., Google Books and World Digital Library).

Nicholas Culpeper (1616–1654), The Complete Herbal (London: Imperial Chemicals (Pharmaceuticals), 1953).

Many randomly encountered field guides and books on botany and horticulture were consulted—too many to mention. However, I am particularly indebted to the six fascicles of Flora of Saskatchewan, published jointly by Flora of Saskatchewan Association and Nature Saskatchewan (2011–2018). “Ferns and Fern Allies” and “Catkin-Bearing Trees and Shrubs” take their names from the titles of Fascicle 1 and Fascicle 5 respectively.

William T. Stearn’s Botanical Latin (4th Edition. Portland: Timber Press, 2004) was an invaluable resource, as was Botanical.com.

For textiles and patterns of William Morris (1834–1896) I often consulted Linda Parry, William Morris Textiles (London: V&A Publishing, 2013).

The paintings of Agnes Martin (1912–2004), who was originally from Macklin, Saskatchewan, have been floating in the back of my head for many years but finally bubbled into this collection after I saw a retrospective of her work at the Guggenheim in 2016.