Nonfiction Monday: The Tree that Time Built – Selections by Mary Ann Hoberman and Linda Winston

To welcome the New Year, I thought that it would be fitting to begin Nonfiction Monday with this anthology of poems selected by U. S. Children’s Poet Laureate Mary Ann Hoberman and Cultural Anthropologist/Teacher Linda Winston – entitled The Tree that Time Built: A Celebration of Nature, Science, and Imagination. To welcome the new, let’s revisit the ancient tree of life built by time. Nonfiction Monday is hosted this week by The Nonfiction Detectives.

As the caption indicated, this is a book of poetry that details the mystery in nature, the magic of science, the mystery within each organism’s breathing being. I have always been interested in the duality between science/math on the one hand and arts/poetry/literature on the other – as if these disciplines are diametrically opposite that ‘never the twain shall meet.’ This book is living proof that if we are able to ‘look at the familiar with strange eyes’ – through the eyes of a poet, the writer, the systematic naturalist, the empiricist – then the likelihood of seeing the universe in a rosebud – is immensely promising. Might even provide a certain texture in our lives that has been missing heretofore. Since the book hardly has any illustrations, I felt that it would be the perfect time to also share some of my husband’s nature photos. 🙂

In the Introduction, the authors noted that:

Science and art have often been cast as opposites, but the division is an artificial one. Scientists, like poets, depend on imagination for many of their core insights. And poets, like scientists, observe and explore connections within the natural world.

Trees in Yosemite. Photo taken by my husband.

Phylum of Poetic Threads and Narratives. It is easy to see how this book is a veritable labor of love. Aside from gathering together a treasury of poems that celebrate the natural world around us, Mary Ann and Linda came up with their own method of categorization as to how these poetry come together in a meaningful way – their own phylum of poetic threads, if you may. What weaves everything together, though, is Charles Darwin and his discoveries.

They started with Oh, Fields of Wonder where the poetry sings of new beginnings – seeking “connections between pebbles and mountains, people and animals, atoms and stars” while at the same time honoring our unique distinction as creatures. My favorite from the set of poems here is the one by Langston Hughes, which I also feel is perfect for New Year:

BIRTH

Oh, fields of wonder

Out of which

Stars are born,

And moon and sun

And me as well,

Like stroke

Of lightning

In the night

Some mark

To make

Some word

To tell.

— Langston Hughes (p. 4)

The Sea is Our Mother is one of my favorite sections. Possibly because I consider myself a child of the sea. In the introduction to this section the authors noted that

The poems in this section recall life’s watery origins as well as the Earth’s own geological beginnings. They speak about the planet’s ongoing transformations, the diverse creatures engendered in the sea, and about our own human connection to them both.

Photo taken in San Francisco by my husband

My favorite here is the poem written by Constance Levy entitled For Rent: One Moon Snail Shell. Here are some fragments from the poem:

FOR RENT beside the ocean’s shore:

One cozy, well kept

Moon Snail shell.

No snail resides there

Anymore.

(It left and didn’t close the door.) 

– p. 27

Prehistoric Praise must be the shortest ‘phylum’ with only eight poems in all by Marilyn Singer, Carl Sandburg, Myra Cohn Livingston to cite a few. Here we get to read an ‘Obituary for a Clam’ as written by Lisa Westberg Peters’ and read an ode to a ‘Dinosaur Bone’ (by Alice Schertle) or a ‘Bird Footprint’ (by Carl Sandburg). In Marilyn Singer’s poem of the same title (Prehistoric Praise), she reminded us that before huge reptiles ruled the earth, there were other organisms that would put some of the science fiction creatures to shame:

sea scorpions the size of automobiles

dragonflies the size of kites

fish that climbed to shore

          on finny feet

trilobites with twenty thousand eyes

ancestral sharks and gliding rays

Marilyn Singer – p. 37

Think Like a Tree is another favorite of mine. Here the reader gets to listen to an old elm speak as documented by poet Kristine O’Connell George. Patricia Hubbell also writes in no-nonsense terms (perhaps even as a word of caution for us to shush since) ‘The Oak Trees are Dreaming.’ I was just reminded that whenever I am overseas, I would make it a point to take photos of treestreestrees. I must have been a dryad in a past life.

I call this my "Huldra in the Woods" moment - photo taken by my husband - Land's End, San Francisco

Trees on fire at Napa Valley - photo taken by my husband.

In Meditations of a Tortoise, Mary Ann and Linda shared some of the myths about tortoises and what they symbolize:

The giant tortoise’s thick impenetrable shell, along with its longevity, make it a popular symbol of eternal life. In both Iroquois and Hindu legends, the earth is supported on the back of a great turtle. The poems in this section tell of tortoises, turtles, lizards, and their other reptile relatives, as well as frogs and toads and other amphibians – all descendants of some of the earliest creatures on earth. (p. 73)

Photo taken by my husband in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

More turtles in Kuala Lumpur - photo taken by my husband

More turtle love - taken in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Photo credit: Roel Bacsal

In Some Primal Termite, the reader rejoices in bees, butterflies, termites, and locusts; flies, walkingsticks, and dragonflies – from topnotch poets such as Joyce Sidman, D. H. Lawrence, Emily Dickinson, and a personal favorite of mine Wislawa Szymborska. Everything that Lives Wants to Fly is a celebration of feathers, peacocks, batwings, seed eaters and airborne creatures. I am the Family Face on the other hand, gives the reader a much deeper appreciation of how similar we are to other creatures, seeking our connections to our earliest ancestors, our anatomical similarities to other organisms – however strange-sounding it may appear to be. Ideations of this could be traced to Darwin’s greatest contribution to humankind: his astute (and often poetic) insights concerning the evolution of species. In the last section entitled Hurt no Living Thing, we are reminded that we are stewards of the earth – and that it is our birthright to ensure that Mother Earth is taken cared of – for the survival of future generations. My favorite from this section, naturally is Mary Ann Hoberman’s The Tree that Time Built (found in p. 171):

Do not fret

And do not doubt.

You are in time.

You can’t fall out.

 

No matter what

You say or do,

You are in time,

Time is in you.

 

And everything

That is to be

Will be in time

Upon this tree.

More trees in Yosemite. - Photo taken by my husband.

More trees and waterfalls - Yosemite. 🙂 Photo courtesy of my husband.

Endnotes. I would consider this book one of my personal favorites. It has awakened my scientist’s eye to perceive the world with a poet’s soul and sensibilities. Not only does it include a repository of helpful scientific facts which perfectly complement the poems – it also includes quite a few pointers about poetic styles, narratives, imageries – several notes on rhyme, lines, and meter. It also includes a glossary of terms, suggestions for further reading and research, and detailed biographies of each poet cited in the book. Truly an amazing resource that libraries, schools, homes should have in their bookshelves.

The Tree that Time Built won the The National Council for Teachers of English (NCTE) Notable Poetry Book for 2009. AWB Challenge: 1 of 35

The Tree that Time Built: A celebration of nature, science, and imagination. Poems selected by Mary Ann Hoberman and Linda Winston. Sourcebooks: Jabberwocky, 2009. Book borrowed from the community library. All photos were taken by my husband, Roel Bacsal, and edited by me.