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Casting Deep Shade: An Amble
"C.D. Wright belongs to a school of exactly one." --The New York Times
"C.D. Wright has been writing some of the greatest poetry-cum-prose you can find in American literature." --Dave Eggers
Casting Deep Shade is a passionate, poetic exploration of humanity's shared history with the beech tree. Before Wright's unexpected death in 2016, she was deeply engaged in years of ambling research to better know this tree--she visited hundreds of beech trees, interviewed arborists, and delved into the etymology, folk lore, and American history of the species. Written in Wright's singular prosimetric style, this "memoir with beech trees" demonstrates the power of words to conserve, preserve, and bare witness.
Honoring Wright's lifelong fascination with books as objects, this final work is a three-panel hardcover that encloses the body of text, illustrated with striking color photographs of beech trees by artist Denny Moers.
George and Nannette Herrick allowed me to watch their best-loved beech be brought to the ground. Mrs. Herrick said her grandson was going to be so mad when he came to town to find his favorite climber gone. Mrs. Herrick wanted the tree cut to the grass. She did not want the stump to linger as a reminder.
Born in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas, C. D. Wright has received numerous honors for her poetry, including the National Book Critics Circle Award. Wright taught at Brown University for over thirty years.
"C.D. Wright has been writing some of the greatest poetry-cum-prose you can find in American literature." --Dave Eggers
Casting Deep Shade is a passionate, poetic exploration of humanity's shared history with the beech tree. Before Wright's unexpected death in 2016, she was deeply engaged in years of ambling research to better know this tree--she visited hundreds of beech trees, interviewed arborists, and delved into the etymology, folk lore, and American history of the species. Written in Wright's singular prosimetric style, this "memoir with beech trees" demonstrates the power of words to conserve, preserve, and bare witness.
Honoring Wright's lifelong fascination with books as objects, this final work is a three-panel hardcover that encloses the body of text, illustrated with striking color photographs of beech trees by artist Denny Moers.
George and Nannette Herrick allowed me to watch their best-loved beech be brought to the ground. Mrs. Herrick said her grandson was going to be so mad when he came to town to find his favorite climber gone. Mrs. Herrick wanted the tree cut to the grass. She did not want the stump to linger as a reminder.
Born in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas, C. D. Wright has received numerous honors for her poetry, including the National Book Critics Circle Award. Wright taught at Brown University for over thirty years.
259 pages, Hardcover
Published February 12, 2019
13 people are currently reading
447 people want to read
About the author
C.D. Wright
44 books97 followersC. D. Wright was born in Mountain Home, Arkansas. She earned a BA in French from Memphis State College (now the University of Memphis) in 1971 and briefly attended law school before leaving to pursue an MFA from the University of Arkansas, which she received in 1976. Her poetry thesis was titled Alla Breve Loving.
In 1977 the publishing company founded by Frank Stanford, Lost Roads Publishers, published Wright's first collection, Room Rented by A Single Woman. After Stanford died in 1978, Wright took over Lost Roads, continuing the mission of publishing new poets and starting the practice of publishing translations. In 1979, she moved to San Francisco, where she met poet Forrest Gander. Wright and Gander married in 1983 and had a son, Brecht, and co-edited Lost Roads until 2005.
In 1981, Wright lived in Dolores Hidalgo, Mexico and completed her third book of poems, Translation of the Gospel Back into Tongues. In 1983 she moved to Providence, Rhode Island to teach writing at Brown University as the Israel J. Kapstein Professor of English. In 2013,
C.D. Wright died on January 12, 2016 at the age of 67 in Barrington, Rhode Island.
In 1977 the publishing company founded by Frank Stanford, Lost Roads Publishers, published Wright's first collection, Room Rented by A Single Woman. After Stanford died in 1978, Wright took over Lost Roads, continuing the mission of publishing new poets and starting the practice of publishing translations. In 1979, she moved to San Francisco, where she met poet Forrest Gander. Wright and Gander married in 1983 and had a son, Brecht, and co-edited Lost Roads until 2005.
In 1981, Wright lived in Dolores Hidalgo, Mexico and completed her third book of poems, Translation of the Gospel Back into Tongues. In 1983 she moved to Providence, Rhode Island to teach writing at Brown University as the Israel J. Kapstein Professor of English. In 2013,
C.D. Wright died on January 12, 2016 at the age of 67 in Barrington, Rhode Island.
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
July 10, 2023
A unique book, unclassifiable, by the late C.D.Wright. Here's a review I did for Michigan Quarterly Review site:
We hear the trunks of beech trees described as pillars that look like the legs of elephants. We hear them called autograph trees, because they hold the wounds made by solipsistic children (or by the poets visiting Lady Gregory at Coole Park) who cut their initials into that smooth gray skin. That is all most of us learn, and sometimes it used to feel like enough.
That was not enough for C. D. Wright. In the years before her sudden and unexpected death in 2016, Wright was fascinated with the American beech (Fagus grandifolia) and the members of its family. She tells us early on that the “American beech … is not the priority here, only because it is rarely among the beeches I see daily where I live in southern New England. Their masses having been greatly diminished since settlers grasped that they grew in soil good for farming.” Perhaps it was that sense of loss that sent her out searching for different kinds of beech trees, that sent her rooting around in the old books collecting lore and the attempts at early science, that forced her to learn everything she could about these trees.
At first glance, Casting Deep Shade is a commonplace book of all this information. She gathers it together in small fragments, seldom more than a fraction of a page long, that appear randomly organized. It is a process recognizable from her earlier work. Although documentary impulses were in her work right from the beginning, after her One With Others from 2010, which combined newspaper reports and interviews with her own verse, to explore a moment in the history of the Civil Rights movement, Wright’s readers expected that combination of research, documentation, and poetry. It was her method, one that set her apart from almost every other poet working.
As we read further into this collection of information, it seems as if Wright has removed herself even further from the page than she had in earlier work. It is only as the book begins to grow on the reader that it becomes clear that there is an organizing poetic impulse behind it. Wright was always fascinated with the words for things, and here the words having to do with the botany and history of beech trees start taking over. There are not only the names of the trees themselves, but all the words for the parts of the tree – lamina, midribs, lenticels– and the larger geographies of trees – copse, grove, coppice. She relishes words like mast,which it seems we should know but the meaning wasn’t quite clear until Wright stresses it (it is the nuts that fall in certain years, but not every year, and make a kind of carpet on the floor of the forest). And she gives us a word for a phenomenon we know but never named. In Michigan winters we see the withered yellow leaves of young beech trees quivering just above the snow until spring. These are called marcescent, Wright teaches us, and the leaves aren’t pushed off until the new buds are formed in the spring. The poet is teaching me things about my own forest that I didn’t know despite my efforts to pay attention!
And between or out of the pockets of information, the poetry arises:
The littlest flowers are unisexual.
It is a Stone Age tree.
An Iron Age tree.
It is an Ice Age tree. According to the pollen record.
Preglacial fossil remains have been found.
There are ages in between.
The evidence is in the peat.
Not introduced by Romans as formerly thought.
To Caesar’s claims, pay no mind. (Hence the phrase: full of baloney.)
In that last sentence on the list, which has gone a long ways from the first one, there is that unmistakable twist of C. D. Wright’s humor, another element in much of her work. A few pages earlier, she writes (incidentally about the trees that were filmed a time or two in Game of Thrones), “In County Antrim, Northern Ireland, there is a landmark tunnel of beeches, the Dark Hedges, planted in the mid-18th century by the Stuart family. Other references list them as 300 years old. Pictures of them would make a romantic out of a rock.” That last sentence is a signature move by the poet C. D. Wright, and goes a long way to explaining the appeal of her unique voice and vision.
Casting Deep Shade is a big book, over 250 pages long, with notes and bibliographies. It is bound in a kind of folding box, in the world of contemporary poetry comparable only to Anne Carson’s Nox, although I think Wright or her publisher might have been thinking more about a specimen box, or even the notebook of a field biologist. Old maps are in here, and eighteenth century illustrations. There are photographs that Wright took herself on her phone; she tells us that with a certain amount of glee. And then there are the photographs by Denny Moers, studied photos of mythic looking old beeches manipulated by dark room techniques and given their own high quality paper to keep their shine. By the end, all of this has come together through a complex web of associations the readers don’t even have to realize they are making. Beech trees have suddenly become part of our shared imagination in a way that comes only through hard study or a memorable poem.
https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/mqr/2019/...
We hear the trunks of beech trees described as pillars that look like the legs of elephants. We hear them called autograph trees, because they hold the wounds made by solipsistic children (or by the poets visiting Lady Gregory at Coole Park) who cut their initials into that smooth gray skin. That is all most of us learn, and sometimes it used to feel like enough.
That was not enough for C. D. Wright. In the years before her sudden and unexpected death in 2016, Wright was fascinated with the American beech (Fagus grandifolia) and the members of its family. She tells us early on that the “American beech … is not the priority here, only because it is rarely among the beeches I see daily where I live in southern New England. Their masses having been greatly diminished since settlers grasped that they grew in soil good for farming.” Perhaps it was that sense of loss that sent her out searching for different kinds of beech trees, that sent her rooting around in the old books collecting lore and the attempts at early science, that forced her to learn everything she could about these trees.
At first glance, Casting Deep Shade is a commonplace book of all this information. She gathers it together in small fragments, seldom more than a fraction of a page long, that appear randomly organized. It is a process recognizable from her earlier work. Although documentary impulses were in her work right from the beginning, after her One With Others from 2010, which combined newspaper reports and interviews with her own verse, to explore a moment in the history of the Civil Rights movement, Wright’s readers expected that combination of research, documentation, and poetry. It was her method, one that set her apart from almost every other poet working.
As we read further into this collection of information, it seems as if Wright has removed herself even further from the page than she had in earlier work. It is only as the book begins to grow on the reader that it becomes clear that there is an organizing poetic impulse behind it. Wright was always fascinated with the words for things, and here the words having to do with the botany and history of beech trees start taking over. There are not only the names of the trees themselves, but all the words for the parts of the tree – lamina, midribs, lenticels– and the larger geographies of trees – copse, grove, coppice. She relishes words like mast,which it seems we should know but the meaning wasn’t quite clear until Wright stresses it (it is the nuts that fall in certain years, but not every year, and make a kind of carpet on the floor of the forest). And she gives us a word for a phenomenon we know but never named. In Michigan winters we see the withered yellow leaves of young beech trees quivering just above the snow until spring. These are called marcescent, Wright teaches us, and the leaves aren’t pushed off until the new buds are formed in the spring. The poet is teaching me things about my own forest that I didn’t know despite my efforts to pay attention!
And between or out of the pockets of information, the poetry arises:
The littlest flowers are unisexual.
It is a Stone Age tree.
An Iron Age tree.
It is an Ice Age tree. According to the pollen record.
Preglacial fossil remains have been found.
There are ages in between.
The evidence is in the peat.
Not introduced by Romans as formerly thought.
To Caesar’s claims, pay no mind. (Hence the phrase: full of baloney.)
In that last sentence on the list, which has gone a long ways from the first one, there is that unmistakable twist of C. D. Wright’s humor, another element in much of her work. A few pages earlier, she writes (incidentally about the trees that were filmed a time or two in Game of Thrones), “In County Antrim, Northern Ireland, there is a landmark tunnel of beeches, the Dark Hedges, planted in the mid-18th century by the Stuart family. Other references list them as 300 years old. Pictures of them would make a romantic out of a rock.” That last sentence is a signature move by the poet C. D. Wright, and goes a long way to explaining the appeal of her unique voice and vision.
Casting Deep Shade is a big book, over 250 pages long, with notes and bibliographies. It is bound in a kind of folding box, in the world of contemporary poetry comparable only to Anne Carson’s Nox, although I think Wright or her publisher might have been thinking more about a specimen box, or even the notebook of a field biologist. Old maps are in here, and eighteenth century illustrations. There are photographs that Wright took herself on her phone; she tells us that with a certain amount of glee. And then there are the photographs by Denny Moers, studied photos of mythic looking old beeches manipulated by dark room techniques and given their own high quality paper to keep their shine. By the end, all of this has come together through a complex web of associations the readers don’t even have to realize they are making. Beech trees have suddenly become part of our shared imagination in a way that comes only through hard study or a memorable poem.
https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/mqr/2019/...
June 10, 2019
This might technically be a book of poetry on beech trees, but it really reveals so much about C.D. Wright. I'm sad she's no longer with us but grateful for this book of small and big facts about trees! Imagine deciding to collect all types of information on beech trees and then relay it with humor and humility. I always think the funniest people are also the smartest people and C.D. Wright was both (she won a MacArthur Grant several years ago).
If you are into reading about trees, you could do way worse than this! I can't recall how I heard about this but it was just recently and I immediately reserved it at the library and am so glad I did.
If you are into reading about trees, you could do way worse than this! I can't recall how I heard about this but it was just recently and I immediately reserved it at the library and am so glad I did.
February 8, 2021
In his introduction, Ben Lerner aptly calls this an "uncommonplace book."
Here are some samples:
"The word copse was used to describe trees that sheltered game. Also, holt.
Both winsome words: cool-down, darkling, and tranquilizing" (9).
"The beech is invariably listed as a park tree not a parking lot tree" (92).
"I give you Donald Culross Peattie, who abandoned French poetry for the forest, at the beginning of his beech tree chapter: A beech is, in almost any landscape where it appears, the finest tree to be seen.
He possessed what Verlyn Klinkenberg describes as an 'arboretum of the mind.'" (180).
Here are some samples:
"The word copse was used to describe trees that sheltered game. Also, holt.
Both winsome words: cool-down, darkling, and tranquilizing" (9).
"The beech is invariably listed as a park tree not a parking lot tree" (92).
"I give you Donald Culross Peattie, who abandoned French poetry for the forest, at the beginning of his beech tree chapter: A beech is, in almost any landscape where it appears, the finest tree to be seen.
He possessed what Verlyn Klinkenberg describes as an 'arboretum of the mind.'" (180).
December 24, 2023
from Casting Deep Shade
Poses no significant litter problem.
Ranks as "not particularly outstanding" according to the Forest Service.
Stone Age men dined on beechnuts with their clubby hirsute hands.
Iron Age man made beechnut flour.
Native Americans made beechnut flour.
Most runes were carved in yew but beech was an acceptable substitute.
A recipe for beechnut butter is easy to obtain.
A lot of nutrients in the fruit of chestnut, oak, beech. Same mealy, meaty family.
Can hold a nail but tends to split when nailed.
Can hold a curve.
As in, the turned parts of the “democratic” Windsor chair.
Except when green.
Nut is rich in oil, of pleasant flavor.
The Druids grew wise eating their nuts.
The pollen record keeps going back and back.
Pollen from pre-Roman peats has been found in the UK.
In a dream it signifies wisdom, else, death.
Is brittle.
In aromatherapy, a confidence booster.
Windfirm if the soil is not shallow.
Limbs low. (2)
[…]
For its carving, a witness tree: I think of a witness tree as one that stood its ground, when something happened, possibly something no human was meant to see […] Witness tree, graffiti tree, tattoo tree, autograph tree, trysting tree, avenue tree, arborglyph, CMT (culturally modified tree), Presidents’ Tree (for the one in Takoma Park carved with presidents from Washington to Lincoln in 1865; blown down in 1997). They say it really doesn’t hurt the tree, all that carving. But harm and hurt are different. Beech bark is a tender thing. (61-2)
[…]
(The beech is fire resistant. Does not mean it will not burn.)
One naturalist calls the eucalypts naturalized citizens. And by registry definition a tree is naturalized once it has become common and has established itself as though wild. (122)
[…]
The beech is adept at intercepting light in the understory.
According to the law of succession, beeches appear in the final stage—this is when the shade trees dominate the canopy. Dominate the understory. Domination is the name of the game. (137)
Poses no significant litter problem.
Ranks as "not particularly outstanding" according to the Forest Service.
Stone Age men dined on beechnuts with their clubby hirsute hands.
Iron Age man made beechnut flour.
Native Americans made beechnut flour.
Most runes were carved in yew but beech was an acceptable substitute.
A recipe for beechnut butter is easy to obtain.
A lot of nutrients in the fruit of chestnut, oak, beech. Same mealy, meaty family.
Can hold a nail but tends to split when nailed.
Can hold a curve.
As in, the turned parts of the “democratic” Windsor chair.
Except when green.
Nut is rich in oil, of pleasant flavor.
The Druids grew wise eating their nuts.
The pollen record keeps going back and back.
Pollen from pre-Roman peats has been found in the UK.
In a dream it signifies wisdom, else, death.
Is brittle.
In aromatherapy, a confidence booster.
Windfirm if the soil is not shallow.
Limbs low. (2)
[…]
For its carving, a witness tree: I think of a witness tree as one that stood its ground, when something happened, possibly something no human was meant to see […] Witness tree, graffiti tree, tattoo tree, autograph tree, trysting tree, avenue tree, arborglyph, CMT (culturally modified tree), Presidents’ Tree (for the one in Takoma Park carved with presidents from Washington to Lincoln in 1865; blown down in 1997). They say it really doesn’t hurt the tree, all that carving. But harm and hurt are different. Beech bark is a tender thing. (61-2)
[…]
(The beech is fire resistant. Does not mean it will not burn.)
One naturalist calls the eucalypts naturalized citizens. And by registry definition a tree is naturalized once it has become common and has established itself as though wild. (122)
[…]
The beech is adept at intercepting light in the understory.
According to the law of succession, beeches appear in the final stage—this is when the shade trees dominate the canopy. Dominate the understory. Domination is the name of the game. (137)
February 27, 2024
I’ve always meant to read C.D. Wright but never seemed to get around to it. I’m glad I finally did. This book is a meditation on trees, especially the beech. It’s also so much more than that. Wright’s writing holds up a mirror and casts reflections on America, her life, environmentalism, and so much more. I’ve never so desperately desired to teach an entire college level semester focusing on a text before - I can think of so many things to discuss, and assignments on observation. This book is such a perfect elegy. It reminded me of all the trees I’ve loved and lost along the way, and why I still cry when the great ones fall. I should also mention this book is a truly lovely object. The photography, art, binding, and even the typesetting all add to the reading experience. I will absolutely be keeping this one for my shelves and revisiting it.
August 1, 2021
10 stars.
What a beautiful, quirky, earnest, clever ode to trees. And to the Ozarks and passenger pigeons and Rhode Island and all kinds of other things. I knew nothing about CD Wright or about beech trees, but now I’m in love with both. In the same way that Richard Powers in Overstory makes you suddenly aware of mulberries and chestnuts, I’ll probably recognize the beech on sight now and smile every time. The stylized photography is a bonus. Read the hardback special edition if you can.
What a beautiful, quirky, earnest, clever ode to trees. And to the Ozarks and passenger pigeons and Rhode Island and all kinds of other things. I knew nothing about CD Wright or about beech trees, but now I’m in love with both. In the same way that Richard Powers in Overstory makes you suddenly aware of mulberries and chestnuts, I’ll probably recognize the beech on sight now and smile every time. The stylized photography is a bonus. Read the hardback special edition if you can.
November 24, 2019
So far, this is my favorite of Wright's books. It is the first that I feel I am allowed an intimate look at her. Her relationship with her father shows up again and again with such tenderness and acceptance. As always I am struck by the way she demonstrates respect through close observant description rather than flowery language. She takes our ordinary words and uses them in such honorable and honoring ways.
March 25, 2019
Now go forth, bring your trees.
C.D. Wright has encapsulated the complete history of the beech within her short lifetime. We hardly know our back yards. Beeches dying like the world, around the globe. This trifold tribute will survive.
C.D. Wright has encapsulated the complete history of the beech within her short lifetime. We hardly know our back yards. Beeches dying like the world, around the globe. This trifold tribute will survive.
July 13, 2020
One of the most unusual books I have read. It is a book of tree lore, particularly the beech tree, but the beech tree in relation to other trees and its locales, and to the people and creatures who diminish or care for it. It is a memoir of a poet who finds a lifelong companionship with the beech and makes connections with the tree wherever she finds herself and with others who know the beech. The photographs alone make this a spectacular volume, but the inquisitive, loving spirit in the words makes it a treasure.
August 21, 2019
A masterwork, and unlike any other book I have ever read.
I think I will go back to it again and again, looking at the photos, sampling bits and pieces here and there. It was marvelous to spend time with this beautiful tome.
A note: this book does not have 160 pages, as officially reported; it has 259. Not sure where the 160 page number originated. There is only one edition of Casting Deep Shade. You'd think they could get the page count right!
I think I will go back to it again and again, looking at the photos, sampling bits and pieces here and there. It was marvelous to spend time with this beautiful tome.
A note: this book does not have 160 pages, as officially reported; it has 259. Not sure where the 160 page number originated. There is only one edition of Casting Deep Shade. You'd think they could get the page count right!
August 28, 2019
I disagree with others about Wright, whose book is written in a conversational prose without the rhythms or explorations of language and self that define poetry. Without the frequent line and paragraph breaks, this would in no formal sense resemble poetry.
No significant insights, no probings beyond the mundane.
Not for me, though I love trees.
No significant insights, no probings beyond the mundane.
Not for me, though I love trees.
Read
May 27, 2020Ambling
Beech-loving
Charming
Deliberate
Erudite
Frank
Gracious
Humorous
Ingenious
Joyful
Keen
Lovely
Meandering
I tried... have to give up at M. this was a very fun and heartwarming, sometimes heartbreaking read.
I enjoyed the humor especially. I regret that I never even attempted to get into one of her classes while I had a chance.
Beech-loving
Charming
Deliberate
Erudite
Frank
Gracious
Humorous
Ingenious
Joyful
Keen
Lovely
Meandering
I tried... have to give up at M. this was a very fun and heartwarming, sometimes heartbreaking read.
I enjoyed the humor especially. I regret that I never even attempted to get into one of her classes while I had a chance.
March 28, 2022
this took forever to read. there's only so much information you can absorb at once and this has sooo much. it was a drag tbh. the most interesting parts where when we got some insight into personal lives, like the authors. otherwise it was just an info dump with little context.
February 10, 2024
From cover to cover, defiantly original. And one of the most beautiful books I've had the pleasure to hold in my hands. A wild and winding journey of a read. A socio-cultural study / a natural history of the beech.
August 6, 2019
An ode to the beech tree, of which I now have more respect. Haunting photos by Denny Moers.
November 1, 2019
I hated this book/novel/poem thing. It was too abstract to impart any true meaning and was pretentious in it's set up. I normally love poetry but this is too far.
December 29, 2019
Just so beautiful and that ending, my heart
January 1, 2021
This is poetry the way all prose written by a poet is ultimately poetry, an uncommon commonplace book.
April 11, 2023
Weirdest textbook I've read
Liked the Taylor Swift Reference
Liked the Taylor Swift Reference
July 22, 2024
Grateful to learn so deeply about beech trees
March 23, 2019
In which Wright does for the beech what Melville did for the whale.
December 8, 2019
I learned a ton from this reflective book on beech trees and yet still feel like I know so little about them.
What is this book? Memoir, journal, rumination, botany textbook, historical textbook, & poetry collection.
It was assembled after the unexpected death of the author, which accounts for its atypical ordering. There are no chapters, and the topics weave in and out, presumably based upon her journaling.
The color photos would be much better if they could be bigger. Because most of the larger plates are an intentional slated-out silvertone, they are more for artistic purposes than visual description. Consequently, I found myself not easily knowing what a beech tree looked like, even though on the surface this entire book is about beech trees. I had to google beech trees to get a better understanding of their appearances.
And yet, it is a remarkable book. Some of the notes I took:
1. Janka scale-- hardness scale for wood
2. Witness tree (p. 61)-- any tree that witnesses a historical event. Waiting for a bestselling novel and movie to use this amazing term.
3. Cherokee syllabary-- I didn't realize that Sequoyah invented the 86-character written language of the Cherokee Nation in 1821. I didn't even know what a syllabary was.
4. Silvicultural = art & science of controlling forest growth
5. Crown shyness-- when canopy of trees do not touch each other. Beautiful photo of this on p. 82
6. "I frequently tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beech tree"-- Thoreau
7. Edward Bach developed a flower remedy in the 1930s made from flower dew, brandy, & water. p.155
8. Fused trunks = opens up and then re-fuses
9. Philosophy is most popular major at Auburn, due in large part to Prof Kelly Jolley, "The Thinker". NYT did a piece on this. p.181
10. Alphabetical list of uses of beech tree applications, p. 191-194
11. Miura fold-- origami-- from Japanese scientist mimics beech leaves unfolding from the bud. Used in space satellites, stents, etc. Like a subway map.
12. Beech trees like to grow among sugar maple, birch, hemlock, white pine, buckeye, white ash, tulip tree, white oak, & witch hazel. Sugar maple & beech are common companions.
13. Mast = beech nuts
Much more here....a great book to read, re-read, and gift.
What is this book? Memoir, journal, rumination, botany textbook, historical textbook, & poetry collection.
It was assembled after the unexpected death of the author, which accounts for its atypical ordering. There are no chapters, and the topics weave in and out, presumably based upon her journaling.
The color photos would be much better if they could be bigger. Because most of the larger plates are an intentional slated-out silvertone, they are more for artistic purposes than visual description. Consequently, I found myself not easily knowing what a beech tree looked like, even though on the surface this entire book is about beech trees. I had to google beech trees to get a better understanding of their appearances.
And yet, it is a remarkable book. Some of the notes I took:
1. Janka scale-- hardness scale for wood
2. Witness tree (p. 61)-- any tree that witnesses a historical event. Waiting for a bestselling novel and movie to use this amazing term.
3. Cherokee syllabary-- I didn't realize that Sequoyah invented the 86-character written language of the Cherokee Nation in 1821. I didn't even know what a syllabary was.
4. Silvicultural = art & science of controlling forest growth
5. Crown shyness-- when canopy of trees do not touch each other. Beautiful photo of this on p. 82
6. "I frequently tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beech tree"-- Thoreau
7. Edward Bach developed a flower remedy in the 1930s made from flower dew, brandy, & water. p.155
8. Fused trunks = opens up and then re-fuses
9. Philosophy is most popular major at Auburn, due in large part to Prof Kelly Jolley, "The Thinker". NYT did a piece on this. p.181
10. Alphabetical list of uses of beech tree applications, p. 191-194
11. Miura fold-- origami-- from Japanese scientist mimics beech leaves unfolding from the bud. Used in space satellites, stents, etc. Like a subway map.
12. Beech trees like to grow among sugar maple, birch, hemlock, white pine, buckeye, white ash, tulip tree, white oak, & witch hazel. Sugar maple & beech are common companions.
13. Mast = beech nuts
Much more here....a great book to read, re-read, and gift.
July 5, 2019
This is my morning read book. Open to any page and see what Wright has to say about the beech tree, people, life. Brilliant! On the last day of the world- I would want to plant a tree.
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews