Rhina Espaillat's "Gardening"

The Daily Poem

Goldberry Studios

Education For Kids, Arts, Kids & Family

4.6 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 7 October 2020

⏱️ 8 minutes

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Summary

Rhina P. Espaillat has published ten full-length books and three chapbooks, comprising poetry, essays, and short stories, in both English and her native Spanish, and translations from and into both languages. Her work appears in many journals, anthologies, and websites, and has earned national and international awards, including the T. S. Eliot Prize in Poetry, the Richard Wilbur Award, the Howard Nemerov Prize, the May Sarton Award, the Robert Frost “Tree at My Window” Prize for translation, several honors from the New England Poetry Club, the Poetry Society of America, the Ministry of Culture of the Dominican Republic, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from Salem State College.

Espaillat’s most recent publications are two poetry collection in English titled Playing at Stillness and Her Place in These Designs; a book of Spanish translations titled Oscura fruta/Dark Berries: Forty-Two Poems by Richard Wilbur; and a book of Spanish translations titled Algo hay que no es amigo de los muros/Something There Is That Doesn’t Love a Wall: Forty Poems by Robert Frost. She is a frequent reader, speaker and workshop leader, and is active with the Powow River Poets, a literary group she cofounded in 1992.

-Bio via rhinaespaillat.com.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to The Daily Poem. I'm David Kern, and today is Wednesday, October 7, 2020.
0:06.8	Today's poem is by Rina P. Espayat, a Dominican poet who was born in 1932.
0:12.9	You've heard from her a few times on this podcast. I read her poem bilingual not too long ago.
0:19.4	When she was seven years old in 1939, Rina Espiont arrived in the United
0:24.5	States from the Dominican Republic after her father and uncle opposed the oppressive dictator
0:29.1	Raphael Trujillo. She first had a poem published in 1948 in Ladies' Home Journal, and her first
0:35.2	book was published in 1992. It was called Lapsing to Grace.
0:39.6	She has won many honors, including the Richard Wilbur Award, the Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award,
0:44.1	the T.S. Eliot Prize, and several others. I want to read this poem today in honor of my friend
0:51.2	Elsie and her grandmother, her abuela, Elsa, who passed away recently.
0:56.7	Elsie and I have chatted a little bit about how Rina Espyat's story reminds her of her grandmother's story.
1:03.4	So today's poem is called Gardening. It was published in the June 1994 issue of Poetry Magazine.
1:09.7	And again, it's in honor of my friend Elsie's abuela,
1:13.7	whose name was Elsa.
1:17.8	My hands are in the dirt, ten fingernails black with it, and half worms come up to writhe in the
1:25.1	hole I've made with a rusty trowel.
1:32.5	I nudge them out, drop them where shade is deeper and moisture.
1:38.5	Nothing to be alarmed about, I tell them. There's enough dirt for us all.
1:43.6	Roots from our neighbor's greedy birch caught on the wrong side of the fence,
1:47.7	"'drop their booty of damp clumps from black sweaty little fists.
1:51.1	"'I pat them back under, dig a new hole.
1:55.6	"'If I don't see you, I don't know you're there,' I tell them.
	...

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