Maxine Kumin on Anne Sexton; In Praise of Pills; This Week's Herbal

With my holiday goodies-making well underway and now that my camera is found, I'm feeling an absolute logjam of food-related posts building up.

So I'd better slide in something non-food-related while it's on my mind.

At our poetry group on Tuesday, we listened to an audio recording of the poet Maxine Kumin, who continues to be lucid, potent, trenchant and poetic, now well into her eighties. She talked about herself, inevitably, but the focus of the talk was her friendship with Anne Sexton, which lasted from the late '50's until Sexton's suicide in 1974. As might be expected, it was some very inspiring and also very poignant listening. Meeting as we were to support one another in our poetry practice, we listened with delight to Kumin's description of the intense intimacy with which they workshopped one another's poems. The fact that they would workshop over the phone and thus receive aural impressions of the poem long before they saw it laid out on the page (which, Kumin said, was wonderful ear-training) was intriguing to all of us as a way to add another dimension to our appreciation and critical faculties.

I felt a little wistful for a time and place in which the big poetry world was so much smaller than it is now. I'm not saying they had it easy at all, especially with the gender bias they still encountered. Kumin received a rejection note from an editor saying he'd have loved to publish her poem, but he had published a woman writer last month and had to wait a few months before he could do so again!!! But the fact that it was a smaller world creates the impression (illusion?) that entry to it might have been easier then.

Kumin's freshness was most inspiring: she said a couple times that she almost felt like she had to apologize for the fact that she was still writing and publishing new poetry, "dinosaur" as she was.

Her words about Sexton's suicide were both difficult and important for me to hear, since I have some experience with both sides of that coin. I've had a best friend commit suicide, and have narrowly missed it myself. I was glad for Kumin that she didn't experience the intense guilt that most friends of suicides experience: she explained that she'd rescued Sexton from several previous attempts, and had been warned by her in no uncertain terms that next time she wouldn't see it coming. But, as she said, here almost forty years later she's still writing it out. It's something you never get over.

She lamented the state of medication at those times and, when speaking of Sylvia Plath (who killed herself in 1963, aged only 31, and with whom they had interacted a little at the Boston Poetry Society), lamented her short life, her genius and how little time she'd had. "Think of what she'd have been able to do if she'd just had the right pills," she said.

That got me. It's probably obvious from my earlier mentions about pills that I have some resistance toward them, and I spent years avoiding them. It's also true that lately I've been having some compliance issues around my own pill program, and the results have not been pretty. It's easy to feel paranoid about 'what they're doing to you,' and to want to be 'yourself,' unmediated, unmedicated. And then it's annoying when your treatment team chorus at you that your behavior is a symptom of your disorder... But finally, these last few days, with another increase in dosage and a little consistency, I'm feeling evened out and actually more like 'myself,' even if it takes this intervention. I'm still not sleeping much, though.

Kumin's "pills" comment came from her position of deep friendship with Sexton. I sometimes feel I have to protect people I'm close to from myself, or even avoid getting too close, to spare them that potential heartache. But Kumin's words actually might have persuaded me that just taking the pills might be the best way to 'protect' the people I care about. I just need to remember this for the times when I don't care anymore if I'm nice to be around or not (or if I'm around at all)...

Speaking of sleep, my hops tincture/syrup seems to be working like a charm for several people around here--a bunch of people having trouble sleeping got their gift early! As I mentioned, I can't use it because it's not compatible with my brain chemistry.

I realized that the herbal project I had been planning was a non-adrenally-impacting "pick-me-up," when what I really needed was to calm the heck down.

So, very very simply, I made an infusion of chamomile and lavender flowers.

They're so beautiful--I find them calming even to look at.

That's about a tablespoon and a half of each, in a quart of hot (not boiling) water. I added it to my regular morning brew of Rhodiola powder and Gynostemma leaves. (The Rhodiola seems to help with anxiety, and the Gynostemma is a great all-round tonic herb, and delicious.)

 But you'll need a strainer for this--the Rhodiola and Gynostemma behave themselves and settle to the bottom (roots and leaves) but the Lavender and Chamomile float up top (flowers).

I hope you're having a lovely weekend, enjoying the quiet of midwinter, preparing holiday goodies if that's your thing.

This Week's Herbal Project--Hops Concluded

There are some things that simply can't be done justice with photographs. Last night, I stayed over at a friend's house. She wasn't there, but she'll be back this afternoon. About five inches of snow fell during the night, and was still falling softly when I got up. So this morning I was out there wearing just a camisole, pants and a hat, shoveling snow from the driveway. When I started, it was too dark to take any kind of picture. By the time I was finished (it took just over an hour), we had gray, snowy daylight, a cleared driveway and high walls of snow on either side. I'm not sure what a picture would have told beyond my words.

In retrospect, I should at least have worn gloves. It was 24 degrees out there and although I was moving almost constantly, the shovel itself was always icy-cold. Mostly the snow was soft and light, easy to scoop up in a big pile, but since it was 24 degrees, if I left a pile for any length of time, it would compress into ice and become harder to move, seem heavier. Out where the driveway met the road, there were chunks of ice buried a couple inches down, thrown there from the road surface when the snow-plow came by earlier. Those were heavy. I sure earned my breakfast this morning! 

I know it's may not seem like a big deal to those of you who've always lived with snowy winters, but this is only my third. I'm still in awe of the choreography needed to make sure that roads are plowed whenever there's a big snowfall, the whole infrastructure, even in a place as self-sufficient as this, that ensures everyone can stay on the move. I'm still in awe that you can't just walk out the door into a familiar landscape: you may have to dig your way through.

Before I left Homer, I managed to finish up my "hops" herbal project. I'd mentioned before that since the active ingredients of hops are partly water-extractable and partly alcohol-extractable, I would probably make a syrup to go with the tincture. And so I did!

I made a reduced decoction of hops, peppermint and a little chamomile by simmering them with a quart of water on our neighbors' wood-burning stove until there was around a pint of liquid. I strained the herbs out of the liquid and made it into a syrup by adding an equal volume of sugar and bringing it just to the boil (I didn't want it to caramelize, so I didn't boil it long). Meanwhile, I had strained the herbs out of the tincture mentioned in the earlier post. When the syrup had cooled, I combined it with the tincture.

I got about three pints! (the two jars on the left)

I took a little taste and I think Phil, and whoever else I share this with, will be able to enjoy a spoonful as a counter to insomnia. There is a bitter aftertaste in there, but the other herbs actually make the overall taste quite pleasant.

On the right of the picture is a hops vinegar! That was a couple cups of hops blossoms steeped in apple cider vinegar for about three weeks. Hops are supposed to be really good for dry skin and dandruff: so much so that some people recommend using beer as a hair rinse! I don't think Phil would approve of that kind of beer-wasting, but I'm game to try a vinegar hair rinse--I've enjoyed them in the past.

I'm feeling the nearness of my journey now, and close here with this image of water flowing under ice--always transition.

Much love.