Love Seats
at Love in Bloom
We all express love in different ways.
Maybe your “love language” is gift-giving. Maybe it’s sharing quality time with someone important to you. Or maybe you express love through language itself.
This summer, poets are doing the talking for us at the Garden—describing connections with nature in ways we may not be able to.
Visit eight unique Love Seats wrapped in poetry.
Each poem encourages you to experience the landscape in a new way—through the poet’s eyes.
What’s in bloom this summer?
Mary Oliver
Photo: © 2005 by Rachel Giese Brown
A National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, Mary Oliver (1935–2019) was a highly prolific writer who took her inspiration from the natural world. She is widely considered one of America’s finest poets, finding beauty in the quiet moments out-of-doors. Much of her work was inspired by the landscape of Cape Cod, where she and her partner of more than forty years, Molly Malone Cook, made their home.
The Summer Day by Mary Oliver
Reprinted by the permission of The Charlotte Sheedy Literary Agency as agent for the author. Copyright © 1990, 2006, 2008, 2017 by Mary Oliver with permission of Bill Reichblum
Bench location: English Walled Garden
“The Summer Day” (1990)
By Mary Oliver
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
William Cullen Bryant
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878) ranks as one of nineteenth-century America’s reigning literary personas. Excelling in school, Bryant eventually went into law and government, though he never lost his love for writing and produced many works. A well-traveled and well-connected thinker, Bryant was an advocate for abolition and worker’s rights, and served as long-time editor in chief of the New York Evening Post. He was a founding trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and a leading advocate for the creation of Central Park.
Bench location: Sycamore Grove
“Summer Wind” (1854)
Excerpt
By William Cullen Bryant
…For me, I lie
Languidly in the shade, where the thick turf,
Yet virgin from the kisses of the sun,
Retains some freshness, and I woo the wind
That still delays its coming. Why so slow,
Gentle and voluble spirit of the air?
Oh, come and breathe upon the fainting earth
Coolness and life. Is it that in his caves
He hears me? See, on yonder woody ridge,
The pine is bending his proud top, and now
Among the nearer groves, chestnut and oak
Are tossing their green boughs about. He comes!
Lo, where the grassy meadow runs in waves!
The deep distressful silence of the scene
Breaks up with mingling of unnumbered sounds
And universal motion. He is come,
Shaking a shower of blossoms from the shrubs,
And bearing on their fragrance; and he brings
Music of birds, and rustling of young boughs,
And sound of swaying branches, and the voice
Of distant waterfalls. All the green herbs
Are stirring in his breath; a thousand flowers,
By the road-side and the borders of the brook,
Nod gayly to each other; glossy leaves
Are twinkling in the sun, as if the dew
Were on them yet, and silver waters break
Into small waves and sparkle as he comes.
Ashley M. Jones
Photo: Courtesy of Amarr Croskey
Ashley M. Jones (b. 1990) is the youngest person and first person of color to be named poet laureate of Alabama. Jones has won numerous awards and fellowships for her work, including the Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship, the Lucille Clifton Poetry Prize, and the Lucille Clifton Legacy Award. She is the founding director of the Magic City Poetry Festival, co-director of PEN Birmingham, a faculty member in the creative writing department at the Alabama School of Fine Arts, and a core faculty member of the Converse University Low Residency M.F.A. Program. She is the author of three books of poetry: Magic City Gospel, dark//thing, and Reparations Now!.
Bench location: Regenstein Fruit & Vegetable Garden and Farm on Ogden
“Photosynthesis” (2021)
By Ashley M. Jones
When I was young, my father taught us
how dirt made way for food,
how to turn over soil so it would hold a seed,
an infant bud, how the dark could nurse it
until it broke its green arms out to touch the sun.
In every backyard we’ve ever had, he made a little garden plot
with room for heirloom tomatoes, corn, carrots,
peppers: jalapeño, bell, and poblano—
okra, eggplant, lemons, collards, broccoli, pole beans,
watermelon, squash, trees filled with fruit and nuts,
brussels sprouts, herbs: basil, mint, parsley, rosemary—
onions, sweet potatoes, cucumber, cantaloupe, cabbage,
oranges, swiss chard and peaches,
sunflowers tall and straightbacked as soldiers,
lantana, amaryllis, echinacea,
pansies and roses and bushes bubbling with hydrangeas.
Every plant with its purpose,
flowers to bring worms and wasps. How their work matters here.
This is the work we have always known,
pulling food and flowers from a pile of earth.
The difference, now: my father is not a slave,
not a sharecropper. This land is his and so is this garden,
so is this work. The difference is that he owns this labor.
The work of his own hands for his own belly,
for his own children’s bellies. We eat because he works.
This is the legacy of his grandmother, my great-granny—
Ollie Mae Harris and her untouchable flower garden.
Just like her hats, her flowerbeds sprouted something special,
plants and colors the neighbors could only dream of.
He was young when he learned that this beauty is built on work—
the cows and the factories in their stomachs,
the fertilizer they spewed out—
the stink that brought such fragrance. What you call waste,
I call power. What you call work I make beautiful again.
In his garden, even problems become energy, beauty—
my father has ended many work days in the backyard,
worries of the firehouse dropping like grain, my father wrist-deep
in soil. I am convinced the earth speaks back to him
as he feeds it—it is a conversational labor, gardening.
The seeds tell him what they will be, the soil tells seeds how to grow,
my father speaks sun and water into the earth,
we hear him, each harvest, his heartbeat sweet, like fruit.
Christina Rossetti
Image: Wikimedia Commons
Christina Rossetti (1830–94) was a prominent writer of the Pre-Raphaelite literary movement. Much of her writing focused on devotional themes and poems for children, though one of her best-known works, “Goblin Market,” has been read variously as an allegory of temptation and salvation, and a commentary on the gender roles of Victorian society.
Bench location: Learning Campus
“What?” (1907)
By Christina Rossetti
What is pink? a rose is pink
By the fountain’s brink.
What is red? a poppy’s red
In its barley bed.
What is blue? the sky is blue
Where the clouds float thro’.
What is white? a swan is white.
Sailing in the light.
What is yellow? pears are yellow,
Rich and ripe and mellow.
What is green? the grass is green,
With small flowers between.
What is violet? clouds are violet
In the summer twilight.
What is orange? why, an orange,
Just an orange!
Margaret Noodin
Photo: Courtesy of Troye Fox
Margaret Noodin, Ph.D., is a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where she also serves as associate dean of humanities. Dr. Noodin is co-founder of Ojibwe.net, which provides educational resources for the Anishinaabemowin language. She is the author of two collections of bilingual poetry: Weweni and Gijigijigikendan: What the Chickadee Knows.
From the author: "In my dreams readers know both Ojibwe and English fluently and delight in the sleight of hand used to be a poet in both languages. For now, until there are more readers of Ojibwe, it is a bridge between worlds, one where love is centered by gender and one where the sighing sound of ‘zaagi’ is an invitation to any Other who accepts it.”
Ozaagi’aan One Open to an Other by Margaret Noodin - Poems, poets.org
Bench location: Rookery
“Ozaagi’aan One Open to an Other” (2020)
By Margaret Noodin
Gizaagi’in apii zaagi’idizoyan
I love you when you love yourself
gaye gaawiin zaagi’idizosiiyan
and when you do not
apii zaagijiba’iweyang
when we escape together
gaye zaagijinizhikawangwaa
and when we chase together
wiindigoog wiindamoonangwaa
the demons who tell us
gaawiin zaagiginzinog ozaagiing
nothing sprouts at the inlet
aanawi gikendamang jiigi-zaaga’igan
when we know at the edge of the lake
gii-zaagida’aawangweyang ingoding
where ashes were poured
zaagaakominagaanzh zaagaagoneg
the bearberry stands in the snow
zaagidikwanaaging ezhi-nisidotamang
branches reaching and tracing
zaagijiwebinamang gaye ishkonamang
what we have tossed and what we have saved
ezhi-naagadawaabandamang
as we examine
gizaagi’in, gizaagi miidash ozaagi’aan.
love.
Perry Honce McGee
Image: Perry Honce McGee was an early twentieth-century American poet. His self-published work My Valued Ruby (1920) features several compositions describing his love for his wife, Ruby Montrose McGee. Other poems speak of McGee’s aspirations and hopes for his fellow Black writers and thinkers, praising the work of Booker T. Washington, Frederick Douglass, and Paul Laurence Dunbar.
The dedication of My Valued Ruby reads:
With love and hope,
To bring the day foresighted,
I dedicate this book to my race.
Bench location: Esplanade Patio
“Life’s Pretty Way” (1920)
By Perry Honce McGee
Oh! how nice
When the sun is shining bright,
To take a long walk
While breezes blow light.
It revives your soul,
Your heart is gay
Strolling the road
Of life’s pretty way.
You’ll walk on the grass
So beautiful and green,
And gone art your memories
Of the past winter’s scene.
You’ll enjoy all the love
In this bright summer’s day,
Wandering the road
Of life’s pretty way.
Omar Khayyám
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Omar Khayyám (Arabic: Ghiyāth al-Dīn Abū al-Fatḥ ʿUmar ibn Ibrāhīm al-Nīsābūrī al-Khayyāmī) (1048–1131) was a Persian astronomer, philosopher, and mathematician born in what is now Iran. During his time, Khayyám was primarily known for his mathematical and scientific pursuits, including performing the astronomical observations necessary to develop a new calendar. Khayyám is largely known in present-day Western countries for a series of quatrains, or poetic stanzas in four lines, which are attributed to him. Collected and translated, somewhat creatively, by Edward FitzGerald (1809–83), “Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám” has remained a popular compilation, with this particular quatrain being one of the best-known.
Bench location: Picnic Glade
“Verse XI from Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám” (1859)
Attributed to Omar Khayyám; translated by Edward FitzGerald
Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,
A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse—and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness—
And Wilderness is Paradise enow.*
*“Enow” is an archaic term meaning “enough”
Huascar Medina
Huascar Medina (b. 1982) is the first Latino and non-academic poet laureate of Kansas. As a National Council on the Arts member, Medina has worked to extend access to the arts for grassroots and emerging artists and organizations. With poems in both English and Spanish that explore ideas of place, inclusion, and home, Medina has stated that he writes for ordinary people so that they can experience extraordinary moments of truth and empathy.
Bench location: Native Plant Garden
“Per Aspera Ad Astra” (2019)
By Huascar Medina
We were lost in the plains,
beautiful and ordinary,
Sunflowers in the fields;
seeds of fallen stars,
standing tall; deeply rooted
in this land.
I've admired how our flowers shine,
grasping towards the sky
beyond the prairie grass; anchored
down to earth; mimicking
the sun.
When a gardener plants
the seeds of Helianthus, he is
performing magic; raising
stars out of the dust where
buzzing planets circle,
half red moons set; and swarming
comets float in orange comas.
I’ve always felt that
late at night, in the bed of a truck,
in a Kansas field; we were
at the center of this universe.
…and I was exactly where I should be,
amongst the flowers; not below.