Found: a rich substrate for poems. Turn to the "Reading the Lichen Thallus" page of the website, Enlichenment:
"Like any good book, a lichen thallus contains a wealth of information.
But first one has to learn to read."
Take some time to explore the entire site--it is really user friendly and welcoming to those who may not be familiar with the jargon of lichenology.
Trevor Goward, one of BC's premier lichenologists and a big fan of Jan Zwicky's philosophy toward metaphors (as well as a personal friend of Zwicky), has written a series of 10 essays that are extremely readable/understandable by the lay person. Important to our group of ecocriticism/place/culture graduate students (and our professor) is the following statement:
Lichens, [Goward] insists, have relevance far beyond their inherent interest as objects of scientific inquiry. Seen at sufficient distance, as metaphor, they become a central pillar in the new scientific, philosophic and artistic world view now emerging across an array of disciplines.
So check out lichens...
(photo of Hypogymnia tubulosa by Tim Wheeler from the Enlichenment website)
Another timely link. Following our discussion during last class about knowing the “Other,” I ran into this article by Tim Flannery in The New York Review of Books: “Tigers, Humans, and Snails”. He reviews two books, each of which involves close contemplation/observation of other species; one book involves a snail and the other a tiger.
The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating
by Elizabeth Tova Bailey
Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 190 pp., $18.95
The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival
by John Vaillant
Knopf, 329 pp., $26.95
Of course, anything written by Vaillant is bound to be good (in my opinion, his book The Golden Spruce is a must-read for all British Columbians). But Flannery’s review/description of The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating also has me deeply intrigued—just the title alone is enough to have me reaching for my wallet!
