Topography of Repeating Plants and Patterns

Viola

Violet

Wallpaper

White Flower II

William Morris in His Disappointment Garden

Yard Goods; Remnants

Acknowledgments

Thank you to the editors of the following publications and venues where some of these poems have previously appeared.

“Cockroach,” “Ferns and Fern Allies,” “Origins of the Poem,” and “Prelude” were first published by Granta Online (January 2021).

“Corn Crowfoot, Corn Buttercup” was first published in The New York Review of Books (April 9, 2020).

“Gazetteer of the Backyard” was first published in Poetry (March 2020).

Six poems from “Floral Correspondences” were first published in The Paris Review (Winter 2019).

“Rhubarb,” “Rue,” and “Sea Lavender” were audio-recorded as part of the Faber & Faber Poetry Podcast #10 (Fall 2019), hosted by Rachael Allen and Jack Underwood.

“Flowers of Brass” and five poems from “Floral Correspondences” were first published in Music & Literature: No. 9 (April 2019).

“Habitat” and “Near Running Water, Streams, and Creeks” were first published in New American Writing 37 (2019).

“The Garden Body: A Florilegium” was first published in Poetry (October 2018).

“White Flower II” was first published in Border Crossings (September 2018).

“Plants Reduced to the Idea of Plants” and “Plants Further Reduced to the Idea of Plants” were first published (with different titles) in Kenyon Review (May/June 2018).

“Sparganium” was first published as a broadside by Arc Poetry Magazine (2018).

“Grasscloth 1,” “Grasscloth (Millefleur),” and (with different titles) “So Blooms (the remedial florilegia),” “So Blooms (a vial of viola tricolor),” “’Struth,” and “Pick Me (Peals the self-serving physic garden)” were first published by Granta Online (November 2017).

“Viola,” “Violet,” and “Root of Scarcity” were first published in Poetry (October 2017).

“William Morris in His Disappointment Garden” and “Pedanius Dioscorides in His Backyard Plot” were first published in Conjunctions Online (February 2017).

“Pick Me (Pours it on thick … )” and “The Dedication” were first published in New American Writing 34 (Summer 2016).

…

I am exceedingly grateful to the Canada Council for the Arts and to the Saskatchewan Arts Board for funding that bought me time to work on Garden Physic.

For their support and encouragement special thanks go out to Rachael Allen, Susan Andrews Grace, Taylor Davis-Van Atta, Paul Hoover, Barbara Langhorst, Daniel Peña, and Don Share. Thanks to Van Broste for his horticultural expertise and for letting me steal leaves from his garden.

My heartfelt appreciation to everyone at New Directions, especially Jeffrey Yang, Barbara Epler, Brittany Dennison, Mieke Chew, Declan Spring, and Erik Rieselbach. Thanks as well to Erik Carter for the cover design that I loved on first sight, and to Marian Bantjes for the exquisite interior design.

Most importantly, my deep love and gratitude to Guy Vanderhaeghe, to whom this collection is dedicated, who wholeheartedly encouraged me to turn the backyard into a living, messy, rabbit-teeming experiment.