Rereading The Heart’s Garden
The Garden’s Heart
By Kenneth Rexroth
has sustained me
through decades
His words continue
Almost unknown
Almost forgotten
But they are there
And re reading
Tears of recognition
of thanks and also of sorrow
What else have I forgotten
What else have I left behind
What else is there
To think
To do
To write
To paint
To believe
To remember
What happens to the environment
the earth
the forest
the birds
the plants
the animals
encased in layers of concrete
glass and steel
overwhelming the natural
yet doomed to failure
to falling
Thank you Kenneth Rexroth
This book is as beautiful as the cover. The writing is so evocative that I had to read it carefully - word by word - the way I usually read poetry.
I often speed read novels. Satisfied with understanding the main story line, following the principal characters and immersing myself in the story without carefully reading each word. Not possible to speed read The Last Warner Woman.
And then Augustown
Augustown started slower for me. Something ominous surrounded the people in the novel. Something was going to happen. I read the novel with anxiety. At one point I put it aside. I didn’t want to know what was going to happen next.
Both books are based on Jamaican history and folk lore.
After reading Augustown, I looked up “Bedward“ and found the following:
“Between 1891 and 1921, Alexander Bedward, an African-Jamaican healer, led the Jamaica Baptist Free Church in August Town, Jamaica, on the Hope River. . .
In the 1930s, Bedwardites and Garveyites transformed Bedward's millenarianism into the more antiestablishment and durable Rastafarian movement…”
blackboards in his classroom with captivating chalk drawings of flowers.
