Bonnie Costello
Dying Ash, A Fable in Search of a Moral
Artist Statement: Talking & Listening to Plants
I was fortunate to spend my childhood in rural Ohio, along the banks of the Scioto River. My father, a chemist, had a fascination for medicinal plants and knew all the Latin appellations. My mother kept an English garden and on walks in the woods and meadows she would call out the country names of wildflowers. Science and poetry thus always seemed natural partners, and the plant world a place of beauty, healing, and home.
As an adult I’m aware that we need to learn from plants as well as about them. Thus, I have turned to writing in the fable form, not to impose human meanings or merely forage for metaphor, but to probe the wisdom of the natural world.
Bonnie Costello divides her time between Boston and western Massachusetts, and practices both literary criticism and creative writing. She taught for 40 years at Boston University and has published many books and articles on modern poetry. Her most recent book is The Plural of Us: Poetry and Community in Auden and Others. Her creative nonfiction has appeared in North American Review, The Gettysburg Review, The Yale Review, Salmagundi, Southern Review, and others. Her essay “How to Reach the Future: A Tale of Four Seeds,” was published in the arboretum magazine Arnoldia, summer 2023.