{"id":205,"date":"2009-04-20T20:58:00","date_gmt":"2009-04-21T01:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/2009\/04\/20\/ruth-padel-tropical-forest\/"},"modified":"2009-04-20T20:58:00","modified_gmt":"2009-04-21T01:58:00","slug":"ruth-padel-tropical-forest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/2009\/04\/20\/ruth-padel-tropical-forest\/","title":{"rendered":"Ruth Padel, “Tropical Forest”"},"content":{"rendered":"

British poet Ruth Padel<\/a> came to New York City recently, and I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to meet with her to talk about her latest book, Darwin: A Life in Poems<\/i><\/a>. In this short video segment, she explains why, although she’s written about nature throughout her literary career, in both verse and memoir, this is the first time she’s really focused on her great-great-grandfather, Charles Darwin. Then, a poem about his wife, Emma.<\/p>\n

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Perhaps, after all, the angel was not wounded.
\nKingdoms of his life rearranged themselves like cloud
\nafter a storm. He felt washed open—an oyster
\ncleansed of grit. Marine metaphors flowed over him
\nas when he paced the deck of the little lone Beagle<\/i>
\nat night. He felt loose, like a runaway cartwheel
\nbouncing from the heights into a valley
\nof violet oak trees. They stood
\nsilent in the drawing-room, surprised.
\nShe’d be engineer of all his happiness. Bees
\nshifted honey-bags up his spine. He was roses
\nburning alive, and she was the haze
\nabove tropical forest plus the unfathomed riches
\nwithin. Like giving to a blind man eyes.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Tomorrow, I’ll share another short video with you, as well as the questions I asked after I put the camera down. In the meantime, you might want to read a NY Times<\/i> profile by Charles McGrath<\/a>, who took her to the Museum of Natural History.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

British poet Ruth Padel came to New York City recently, and I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to meet with her to talk about her latest book, Darwin: A Life in Poems. In this short video segment, she explains why, although she’s written about nature throughout her literary career, in both verse and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}