I Yam What I Yam . . . But Am I a Potato?

Poetry feeds our souls. Sweet potatoes feed our bellies. And a poem about sweet potatoes -- here called "yams" -- well, I'd venture that feeds multiple appetites simultaneously, including our curiosity.

Wait. Check that.

It doesn't feed our curiosity as much as spark it, as an appetizer warms us up for eating.

But before I get into that, read today's poem. Just pay special attention to the first line.

American Life in Poetry: Column 154

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Though some teacher may have made you think that all poetry is deadly serious, chock full of coded meanings and obscure symbols, poems, like other works of art, can be delightfully playful. Here Bruce Guernsey, who divides his time between Illinois and Maine, plays with a common yam.

Yam

The potato that ate all its carrots,
can see in the dark like a mole,

its eyes the scars
from centuries of shovels, tines.

May spelled backwards
because it hates the light,

pawing its way, paddling along,
there in the catacombs.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2008 by Bruce Guernsey. Reprinted from New England Primer by Bruce Guernsey, Cherry Grove Collections, 2008, by permission of Bruce Guernsey and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

Okay, so we know potatoes don't eat carrots, unless we're talking compost, so we'll chalk that up to creative license and a nod toward the "yam's" orange flesh. But what about this potato business in a poem titled "Yam"? Anybody catch the problem here?

Turns out, yams are not sweet potatoes, and yet, kinda, they are.

Here's the deal. Technically, botanically, yams and sweet potatoes are unrelated. Yams are monocots; sweet potatoes, dicots. Yams are from the Dioscoreaceae or Yam family; sweet potatoes arise from the Convolvulacea or morning glory family. And the list goes on.

But here in the U.S. yams are sweet potatoes thanks to a blend of tradition and a marketing ploy the Louisiana growers trotted out some decades back. Seeking to set their product apart from the other varieties of sweet potatoes available, the folks in Louisiana took to calling their sweeties "yams" after the soft African yams they resembled.

And thus a market niche -- and consumer confusion -- were born.

But don't go thinking that's the only point of confusion here. Here's one more for the road.

Yams, as we've noted, aren't sweet potatoes, but then, just to round things out, sweet potatoes aren't even potatoes. They're distant cousins at best, with each a part of a different genus:

Potato: Solanum tuberosum
Sweet Potato: Ipomoea batatas

Pretty neat, eh? Curiosity satisfied yet?

Posted by Mary Ann Leonard

Added to Food and Nutrition and Plants and Crops and Poetry on October 23, 2009 EST | Permalink

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Lively discussions and different opinions are encouraged within the bounds of respectful civil discourse. Questionable language, personal attacks, off-topic comments, and gratuitous links will either be edited or deleted. Comments are moderated and will not appear on InfoFarm until they have been approved.

Nice work, your awesome content has forced me to to leave some positive feedback.

Submitted by: zaklady bukmacherskie on November 6, 2009 04:02 PM

Layers

Since we're on the topic of worms, and since I haven't offered a poem in a while, I thought I'd borrow a page from the Library of Congress and feature the work of the Nation's current Poet Laureate, Kay Ryan.

Like so much of Ryan's poetry, this one looks closely at an ordinary something and finds there much more than a common encounter with earthworms forced to the surface. The material reality is there, but so, too, are layers of meaning waiting to be unearthed.

The Late Worm
by Kay Ryan

The worms
which had been
thick are thin
upon the ground
now that it's gotten
later. They stick
against the path,
their pink chapped
and their inching
labored. It's a
matter of moisture
isn't it? Time, a
measure of wet,
shrinking, the
drier you get.

Source: Poetry (January 2008).

See what I mean?

If you're beginning a vermicomposting project, this poem can vividly remind you to keep the contents of your bin moist, but if you allow yourself to sink into the poem itself, you can muck around, as Ryan does, with the words and their meanings. Thick, thin and stick, for example, are not actually used to describe the drying worms, but they are there nonetheless, evoking the image even as they perform other duties.

As a recent Newsweek article about Ryan attests:

The effect is delightful and weird, like language playing a game of telephone with itself. As the poems swerve between images and ideas, meaning and sound, white space and the black ink of a line—between surface action and metaphorical depths—the attentive reader will see a glimmer of secret life.

So, what layers have you uncovered in the Ryan poem? Let us know below.

And relax. Unlike your 10th grade English teacher, I won't be grading your response.

But I will leave you with some lovely parting gifts: great stuff on Kay Ryan from the Library of Congress, and, of course, more on worms from NAL's catalog. Enjoy.

Posted by Mary Ann Leonard

Added to Poetry on July 08, 2009 EST | Permalink

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Lively discussions and different opinions are encouraged within the bounds of respectful civil discourse. Questionable language, personal attacks, off-topic comments, and gratuitous links will either be edited or deleted. Comments are moderated and will not appear on InfoFarm until they have been approved.

Thanks very much, MA, for these slick and wormy poetry, links and ideas! It's far from slick anywhere around my house these days, and, I've misplaced my sprinkler, too! The Kay Ryan Newsweek item was really a joy to partake! Thanks, again! - K

Submitted by: Karl Schneider on July 16, 2009 07:39 PM

Submitted by: D. Herendeen on July 29, 2009 10:42 AM

Submitted by: Mary Ann on July 30, 2009 11:33 AM

Submitted by: Magick on September 21, 2009 01:06 AM

Plowed Under

Have you ever had one of those projects that just took every minute you had to give it? I've just come out the other side of one, and ya' know, now that I'm done, I'm done -- fully spent, depleted, exhausted.

Sure, there's a sense of accomplishment, but I think I'm going to need a bit more time between me and the project before I can really enjoy that. Right now, I feel more like the horse in the following poem, with nothing left to give.

American Life in Poetry: Column 154

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Here, poet Yusef Komunyakaa, who teaches at New York University, shows us a fine portrait of the hard life of a worker--in this case, a horse--and, through metaphor, the terrible, clumsy beauty of his final moments.

Yellowjackets

When the plowblade struck
An old stump hiding under
The soil like a beggar's
Rotten tooth, they swarmed up
& Mister Jackson left the plow
Wedged like a whaler's harpoon.
The horse was midnight
Against dusk, tethered to somebody's
Pocketwatch. He shivered, but not
The way women shook their heads
Before mirrors at the five
& dime--a deeper connection
To the low field's evening star.
He stood there, in tracechains,
Lathered in froth, just
Stopped by a great, goofy
Calmness. He whinnied
Once, & then the whole
Beautiful, blue-black sky
Fell on his back.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c) 2001 by Yusef Komunyakaa, reprinted from "Pleasure Dome: New & Collected Poems, 1975-1999," Wesleyan Univ. Press, 2001, by permission. Introduction copyright (c) 2008 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

Of course, I do not plan on keeling over like Mr. Jackson's plow horse, but a big flop on my bed sounds nice, a shuddering precursor to a blessedly long night's sleep. What better way to face tomorrow--and tomorrow's projects--refreshed?

If your project calls for more prints like the one reproduced above, see USDA's Historical Photos collection. And for a broader selection of agriculturally related photos, dip into the many great photo resources NAL has pulled together.

Or if you're drawn more to poetry than to pictures, you might be surprised to learn that NAL actually carries some works of poetry. It's not a large collection, but an interesting one. Check with your local library for help finding those that strike your fancy.

Posted by Mary Ann Leonard

Added to Poetry on March 25, 2008 EST | Permalink

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Lively discussions and different opinions are encouraged within the bounds of respectful civil discourse. Questionable language, personal attacks, off-topic comments, and gratuitous links will either be edited or deleted. Comments are moderated and will not appear on InfoFarm until they have been approved.

MA, What a spendid treat you've shared with all here on the InfoFarm - a sweet front porch treat!. The country - life (work) poem (beautiful!) w/ the link to extremely rich, interesting range of poetic materials from NAL was "off the hook"! BRAVO-Thanks! And, BRAVO-Thanks!, too for the NAL work completed and referenced in your poetic intro to "YellowJackets". That gets my 115% thanks and congratulations! I hope & expect all the NAL community (and that's a big bunch- "F2 E2", ya know!) will be blessed by these collective efforts toward the work just cooked-up. A fine dessert! I'm real anxious for the dish to "cool before serving", ya know! Thanks, again MA! I do hope you're gaining extra strength by, for, from these collective, collected efforts, w/rest, too :)! - Karl S

Submitted by: Karl S on April 6, 2008 10:26 AM

Submitted by: Luisa S. on April 13, 2008 06:36 PM

The Flower Itself Entered Our World

It's Friday, and in the idiosyncratic logic of a blogger, I've decided we needed a bit of culture here at InfoFarm.

It's also fall, which means that the culture I've chosen -- Connie Wanek's poem "Amaryllis" -- appropriately aligns with the season. All the gardening sites out there will tell you that we've stumbled into that bulb's planting season. And the local garden shops have them in stock, since they've become popular as winter blooms.

So, if you'd like your own amaryllis, get to work this weekend, and you should have something in 7 to 10 weeks. Until then (or for those lacking the proverbial green thumb), enjoy this vivid lyrical version, courtesy of poet Connie Wanek, and Ted Kooser's American Life in Poetry site:

American Life in Poetry: Column 084

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Many of this column's readers have watched an amaryllis emerge from its hard bulb to flower. To me they seem unworldly, perhaps a little dangerous, like a wild bird you don't want to get too close to. Here Connie Wanek of Duluth, Minnesota, takes a close and playful look at an amaryllis that looks right back at her.

Amaryllis

A flower needs to be this size
to conceal the winter window,
and this color, the red
of a Fiat with the top down,
to impress us, dull as we've grown.

Months ago the gigantic onion of a bulb
half above the soil
stuck out its green tongue
and slowly, day by day,
the flower itself entered our world,

closed, like hands that captured a moth,
then open, as eyes open,
and the amaryllis, seeing us,
was somehow undiscouraged.
It stands before us now

as we eat our soup;
you pour a little of your drinking water
into its saucer, and a few crumbs
of fragrant earth fall
onto the tabletop.

Reprinted from "Bonfire," New Rivers Press, 1997, by permission of the author. Copyright © 1997 by Connie Wanek. Her most recent book is "Hartley Field," from Holy Cow! Press, 2002. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

Finally, for more prints like the one reproduced above, see the collection of images from Curtis's Botanical Magazine presented by the Library's Special Collections.

Posted by Mary Ann Leonard

Added to Plants and Crops and Poetry on November 02, 2007 EST | Permalink

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Lively discussions and different opinions are encouraged within the bounds of respectful civil discourse. Questionable language, personal attacks, off-topic comments, and gratuitous links will either be edited or deleted. Comments are moderated and will not appear on InfoFarm until they have been approved.

What a coincidence! As chance would have it, one of this year's holiday cards from Special Collections features the Christmas Amaryllis in "the red of a Fiat," as the poem says. The card reproduces Barbara Cotton's illustration of Amaryllis regina vittata (engraving by William Say), plate 15 of Transactions of the Horticultural Society of London, Volume V (London, 1824). Learn more about the Christmas Amaryllis or get more details about all of our potential holiday gifts and stocking stuffers on our Web site. As always, a portion of all sales goes to protecting and preserving the historic treasures housed at your National Agricultural Library.

Submitted by: NAL's Special Collections on November 20, 2007 09:05 AM