Garden Physic
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- £8.99
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- £8.99
Publisher Description
Garden Physic is a radical poetic movement through plant life. With her singular line, she journeys readers through an investigation of how we articulate our ecological surrounds in language through botanical histories.
With a structure that emulates the style of classic manuscripts, Legris's book deploys humour, deep intellect, and a fanatical obsession with the potential of language, punching through the cliches of contemporary nature writing. A brief snapshot:
how to write about flowers without the nauseating sentimental phraseology?
No quaint, no dainty, no winsome. This smells good, that smells bad, my hands
rank with manure. This at least is pure.
The whole book is a glorious meditation on the garden and the power of plants: how they can heal us, emotionally and physically, and how we communicate with them.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In her medieval-inspired sixth book, Legris (The Hideous Hidden) offers the reader a "physic" in its archaic sense, as remedies for ailments: "Sea urchin for ulcers./ Hedgehog for convulsions./ Sea horse with goose grease for baldness." The book's main section is modelled on the masterwork of first-century CE Greek surgeon Pedanius Dioscorides, whose De materia medica illustrated the pharmacological uses of hundreds of plants. Appendices, a bibliography, and an index complete this poetic volume, which is at once "a catalogue, a desire, a wish." Stylized patterns of meter, rhyme, and alliteration cast their spells: "Burn the bark, scrape the dust from the wood./ Bitter berries expel bitter wind./ Oil of juniper remedies viper bite./ Spirit of juniper restores sore sight." Legris wants the reader to see "A metrical line from plant to poet to the god of physicians." Addressing a beloved in the persona of Vita Sackville-West, she asks, "How to write about flowers without the nauseating sentimental phraseology? This smells good, that smells bad, my hands rank with manure. This at least is pure." Bookish gardeners will delight in this playful modern-day florilegium.
