POETRY

Flowere and Are
A Charm for Chestnut

By Anna Lena Phillips Bell     Reprinted with permission from University of Georgia Press
Vertical Divider
​Flowerer, burrer, who grew and still grow,
springing from centuries' roots each year—​
thin stems, stubborn and glad, a green law
of toothed leaves lifted to flutter and flare
and yellow and fall over sloped forest floor.
Saplinget, sprouthern benearly, resistical,
toughestnut, risinget aftern devaster,
sun-seekinget standant—repear, foresist.
 
Flocks of cream catkins, limbs done up in snow,
bud, flood, and floor us—scent midsummer air,
funk loosened and drifting down canopy, hollow,
telling the bees your nectar is here.
Hem hillsidely slopen, persisticky ofter,
abunderal sprountain abovering, mistical,
bloominget covery, flowere and are—​
sun-seekinget standant, repear, foresist.
 
Set seed. Send prickly burrs bursting from boughs
for chipmunk and turkey, squirrel and bear,
to save over winter or savor right now.
Abundred wholes bestnut, existand, nappear—​
burstory, nestnut—neath mistance, benear.
Pinest, othemlocks, towardwood persistical,
seedlingent reachinget, vering, emer,
sun-seekinget standant, repear, foresist.
 
Commonarchy, come and be crowned again, wear
leaf upon leaf, know sap flow and signal.
Mountainough, appinest, saplingly ver,
sun-seekinget standant—repear, foresist.




This poem’​s sources include research on the history of chestnut blight and text imagining favorable conditions for the chestnut. The combined source text was fed into an n-gram generator set at order 3, created by Brian Hayes. The resulting text was used in making the poem.
​

AMERICAN CHESTNUT

Castanea dentata

Habitat and Range: Low ridges, midslopes, lower slopes, and coves

Description and Notes: When European settlers arrived, about one in every four trees in the Appalachians was a chestnut. Up to one hundred feet in height, the giant chestnut was valued for its rot-resistant wood and its “carroty-tasting” nut, a major food source for animals ranging from livestock to the eastern black bear. In 1904 a pathogenic fungus that became known as the chestnut blight was introduced to New York City from Japan via nursery stock. By the 1940s chestnuts throughout the East had succumbed and died, a decimation on the scale of that of the passenger pigeon or bison. The loss of this resource—the income from timber and the beauty of the trees—was particularly acute in the rural economy of the Southern Appalachians. But the saplings that still sprout tenaciously, if briefly, from diseased stumps have spurred tireless work to engineer blight-resistant strains and resurrect the chestnut’s ancient grandeur.


A Literary Field Guide to
​Southern Appalachia

University of Georgia Press