Bonnie Costello
A Tree Ring Meditation
Artist Statement: Talking & Listening to Plants
We seek our likeness in the trees. Their seasonal changes serve as a reassuring figure of return, a counterpoint to our human sense of loss as a terminus. But in thinking about trees as I grow old, I find a different message about mortality. While trees do give us an image of renewal while they are alive, they also remind us, as they die, that individual being is merely an aspect of a greater, vibrant whole, Life and all that supports it.
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.