The Apostrophe Blog
I have been thinking lately about the myriad ways one can construct a poem in multiple parts. I did exactly that when I wrote Great Hunger, my multi-part poem investigating the intersection of landscape and place as it relates to one ecological and humanitarian disaster, the mid-19th century Irish potato famine. This long poem was published by Anchor & Plume Press in Baton Rouge, Louisiana back in 2016. The series begins with a visit to the Irish Hunger Memorial in Lower Manhattan, mere blocks from the World Trade Center site, and meanders its way through historical texts, scraps of found language, the genealogy of my Flynn forbears as well as musings on famine and climate change. In one section, a list poem muses its way through varieties of the very potato itself! That section is below.
“Untold Varieties of Potato Make a Poem”
Blame the watery Lumper
with its large-crop yields,
enough to feed a family of ten
before the potato murrain battered it,
turned it rot.
Preferable to be named Désirée,
Superior or Red Bliss.
To flee from the Pink Eye,
out for variety: Selma or Castle Rock.
The Irish Cobbler with its deep-set
eyes never saw the famine coming.
All Blue, All Red, even the white flesh no help
for the too-weak-to-stand,
left alone to scrub, chop, boil, fry, stew
Russet, a better baker,
Yellow Finn, the exemplary mashed.
Oh, the fingerlings with their chubby
digits all wax, wee darlings of gourmet,
where, pray tell, are they pointing now?
After Phytophthora infestans leaves them to go off—
where, do tell, the finger-pointing now?
Their digits waxed, waned darlings of gourmet
yes, the fingerlings and their chummy.
Yellow Finn is the exemplary mashed
but Russet makes a better baker.
Left alone to scrub/chop/boil/fry/stew,
for the too-weak-to-stand,
all blue, all red, even their white flesh no help.
Eyes never saw the famine coming.
The Irish cobbler with a deep, set
out for variety: Selma or Castle Rock.
Fleeing from Pink Eye,
Superior and Red Bliss.
Preferable to be named Désirée?
Turning. To rot.
Before the potato murrain’s battering,
enough to feed a family of ten
with its large-crop yields:
blame, the watery lumpen.
The photograph above is of the Red Pontiac potatoes we grow in our community garden plot every spring, a variety that did not make it into my potato list poem. We harvest them early to enjoy as Cornell Salt Potatoes, a recipe that is very famous in the Finger Lakes region of central New York and often a feature of every summer BBQ in that part of the world.
Interests: Reading, writing, not arithmetic. The art and craft of poetry. Photography. Vegetable and flower gardening especially heirloom bulbs and dahlias. Movies in real theatres. Theatre on real stages. Art in real galleries. Crossword puzzles and, of course, Wordle. Singer-songwriters like Aimee Mann and Patti Griffin. All kinds of music especially 1930s jazz. Venice, Italy! The Dude abides.
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