Claire Blotter

I have always loved plants, trees and the “deep green” of nature. I was lucky as a young child to live near a beautiful lake in a New Jersey neighborhood surrounded by towering trees that seemed to beg to be climbed. My refuge, the huge oak in the backyard, anchored me to the earth.

 In the third grade, my family moved to the barren Palm Springs desert. I was devastated by the arid, then largely empty landscape, intense sun and heat. As soon as I could, I was off to college weaving my way up the cooler northern California coast from U.C. Santa Barbara to California State Polytechnic University at San Luis Obispo and at last, to U.C. Berkeley near where I now live in the lush green county of Marin. I felt “home” again in the Santa Cruz Mountains, near stunning Bolinas beaches and wetlands and among the Redwoods of Mill Valley.

 “Plant Observation” and “The Deep Green” were written in response to language, heard on the radio and read on the page. In both cases, I was responding to the passionate words of authors with intense love for the natural world. I, too, had experienced and shared the same profound connection to forests and foliage as Zoe Schlanger and Brigit Pegeen Kelly.

 “Plant Observation” was written from excerpts of an interview with Zoe Schlanger about her book, THE LIGHT EATERS. While listening to National Public Radio, I became enthralled with the scientific vocabulary she used that unlocked the energy and inner voices of the plant world. The specific language was beautiful and rhythmic. I couldn’t resist writing it down.

 Afterward, I arranged transcribed pieces of the interview into a poem trying to capture the uniqueness and diversity of plant life which Zoe so eloquently described. Her words seemed to “fall into” sections of my poem maintaining the rhythms of her speech and her awe at each extraordinary plant. The process of creating a poem with precise language and loosely connected fragments was exciting to me, right down to the last stanza that took me by surprise.

 “In the Deep Green” was inspired by a beautiful poem called, “The Rose of Sharon,” by Brigit Pegeen Kelly that I had found in an anthology of best poems of the year. I had been looking for an example of a strong rhythmic poem for my writing workshop. On first reading it, I had recognized that Kelly’s love for this special flower held the same passion as my love for trees and plants. Years later, on finding and re-reading the poem, I began writing inspired by her first line and allowed my words to flow from her wonderful rhythms and anaphora. I hope that my poem somehow conveys just a bit of the beauty and mesmerizing cadence of Kelly’s heart-felt words and love of a singular rose.