When I read the world’s first novel The Tale of Genji, I was a skeptic. Characters spoke to one another in lines of poetry. Romantic, sure—but unlikely.
Until my stroll through the Seattle Japanese Garden on Sunday. I realized Lady Murasaki knew her stuff, and she was doing a lot more than building literary allusions. Suddenly, amid the Japanese maples and the koi pond, only poetry could frame my thoughts.
“The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.”
Edna St. Vincent Millay
“I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief.”
Wendell Berry
“Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.”
James Wright
The Trailer Park MFA 