How to live and how to die, Patti Smith on libraries and the transformative power of reading, a poetic Victorian encyclopedia of lessons from flowers

NOTE: This newsletter might be cut short by your email program. [View it in full](.  If a friend forwarded it to you and you'd like your very own newsletter, [subscribe here]( — it's free.  Need to modify your subscription? You can [change your email address]( or [unsubscribe](. [Brain Pickings]( [Welcome] Hello {NAME}! This is the weekly [Brain Pickings]( newsletter by Maria Popova. If you missed last week's edition — music, loneliness, and transcendence; an 18th-century woman's illustrated encyclopedia of medicinal plants; the heartbreak of Hans Christian Andersen — you can catch up [right here]( if you missed the annual summary of the best of Brain Pickings 2019, you can find it [here](. And if you find any value and joy in my labor of love, please consider supporting it with a [donation]( – I spend innumerable hours and tremendous resources on it each week, as I have been for more than thirteen years, and every little bit of support helps enormously. If you already donate: THANK YOU. [How to Live and How to Die]( A year ago, I lost my darling friend Emily Levine (October 23, 1944–February 3, 2019). [Figuring]( in which she rightly occupies the first line of [the acknowledgements]( was just being released. The book would not have existed without her, nor would [The Universe in Verse]( — several years earlier, Emily had swung open for me the doorway to the world of poetry in an incident of comical profundity emblematic of her singular and irreplaceable spirit, which I recounted with ample affection and no small dose of embarrassment about fifty minutes into [the inaugural Universe in Verse](. After her terminal diagnosis in 2016, I began taking Emily on periodic getaways in nature. We called them poetry retreats — weekends of soaring, meandering conversation, inventive cooking (one instance involving a thallus of kelp collected at low tide, which we had used as a dog leash before dining on it), and delicious poetry-reading, which we recorded on a phone as tender mementos from these precious hours, not fully realizing in the moment the bittersweetness of the act. This poem, originally published in [The Sun]( in 2010, is the last poem Emily read at the last poetry retreat three weeks before she returned her stardust to the universe. [d69fcab3-70ec-4f38-b7dc-d40e7dae1d56.png]( [2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png]COLD SOLACE by Anna Belle Kaufman When my mother died, one of her honey cakes remained in the freezer. I couldn’t bear to see it vanish, so it waited, pardoned, in its ice cave behind the metal trays for two more years. On my forty-first birthday I chipped it out, a rectangular resurrection, hefted the dead weight in my palm. Before it thawed, I sawed, with serrated knife, the thinnest of slices — Jewish Eucharist. The amber squares with their translucent panes of walnuts tasted — even toasted — of freezer, of frost, a raisined delicacy delivered up from a deli in the underworld. I yearned to recall life, not death — the still body in her pink nightgown on the bed, how I lay in the shallow cradle of the scattered sheets after they took it away, inhaling her scent one last time. I close my eyes, savor a wafer of sacred cake on my tongue and try to taste my mother, to discern the message she baked in these loaves when she was too ill to eat them: I love you. It will end. Leave something of sweetness and substance in the mouth of the world. Taste a little more of the raisined delicacy of Emily’s voice with her bittersweet reading of [“You Can’t Have It All”]( — a buoy of a poem by Barbara Ras — then savor her extraordinary TED talk about [learning to die](. Portrait by John Keatley [Forward to a friend]( Online]( [Like on Facebook]( donating=loving Every week for more than 13 years, I have been pouring tremendous time, thought, love, and resources into Brain Pickings, which remains free and is made possible by patronage. If you find any joy and solace in my labor of love, please consider supporting it with a donation. And if you already donate, from the bottom of my heart: THANK YOU. monthly donation You can become a Sustaining Patron with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a Brooklyn lunch.  one-time donation Or you can become a Spontaneous Supporter with a one-time donation in any amount. [Start Now](  [Give Now]( [The Moral of Flowers: An Illustrated Victorian Encyclopedia of Poetic Lessons from the Garden]( [moralofflowers_rebeccahey.jpg?fit=320%2C565] “In forty years of medical practice, I have found only two types of non-pharmaceutical ‘therapy’ to be vitally important for patients with chronic neurological diseases: music and gardens,” the poetic neurologist Oliver Sacks wrote in contemplating [the healing power of gardens](. More than two centuries earlier, gardening had taken on a new symphonic resonance with the psychological and physiological score of human nature when the philosopher Erasmus Darwin, Charles Darwin’s grandfather, published The Botanic Garden — a book-length poem using scientifically accurate verse to enchant the popular imagination with the scandalous new science of sexual reproduction in plants. Botany was suddenly both sensual and poetic, seeding a new genre of literary botanica in the early nineteenth century. Crowning it is a book of especial loveliness — the 1833 gem [The Moral of Flowers]( ([public library]( | [public domain]( by the poet, painter, and self-taught naturalist Rebecca Hey. [moralofflowers_rebeccahey_passionflower1.jpg?resize=680%2C893] Passionflower. Available [as a print](. Perched partway in time and sensibility between Elizabeth Blackwell’s [illustrated encyclopedia of medicinal plants]( and Emily Dickinson’s [wildflower herbarium]( this illustrated encyclopedia presents a singular fusion of Hey’s original verse, poetic prose, and perfectly selected quotations from celebrated poets about each flower, coupled with beautiful engravings drawn from life by William Clark, former draughtsman and engraver of the London Horticultural Society. [moralofflowers_rebeccahey_honeysuckle1.jpg?resize=680%2C893] Honeysuckle. Available [as a print](. The unexpected success of the book — all the rarer in an era when hardly any women were published authors — emboldened Hey to learn to paint and pursue an improbable dream that became, fifteen years later, [the world’s first illustrated encyclopedia of trees]( featuring her own original art. [moralofflowers_rebeccahey_almond_s6.jpg?resize=680%2C976] Almond blossom. Available [as a print](. From fragrant favorites like the honeysuckle and jasmine, to humble beauties like the daisy and wild wallflower, to literary symbol-corsages like the violet, which Emily Dickinson cherished above all other flowers for its “unsuspected” splendor, and the almond blossom, on which Albert Camus predicated his [timeless metaphor for strength through difficult times]( Hey’s catalogue of blooming splendor traces the etymologies of flower names, describes their habitat, and invokes Shakespeare, Milton, and Wordsworth to explore their cultural symbolism, aiming to “pursue such a train of reflection or draw such a moral from each flower that is introduced as its appearance, habits, or properties might be supposed to suggest.” [moralofflowers_rebeccahey_frontispiece1.jpg?resize=680%2C930] Field wildflowers (frontispiece). Available [as a print](. [2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png]Flowers of the field, how meet ye seem, Man’s frailty to pourtray, Blooming so fair in morning’s beam, Passing at eve away; Teach this, and oh! though brief your reign, Sweet flowers, ye shall not live in vain. [moralofflowers_rebeccahey_crocus_s6.jpg?resize=680%2C952] Snow-drop and crocus. Available [as a print](. Just as poet Jane Hirshfield would draw, nearly two centuries later, [a buoyant lesson in optimism from a tree]( Hey draws on flowers to contemplate questions of mortality, grit, adaptability, how to find beauty in melancholy and cheerfulness in solitude, how to live “heedless of all obstacles.” [moralofflowers_rebeccahey_hare-bell1.jpg?resize=680%2C1025] Hare-bell. Available [as a print](. [moralofflowers_rebeccahey_rhododendron1.jpg?resize=680%2C972] Rusty-leaved rhododendron. Available [as a print](. [moralofflowers_rebeccahey_bittersweet1.jpg?resize=680%2C906] Bittersweet. Available [as a print](. [moralofflowers_rebeccahey_rosemary_s6.jpg?resize=680%2C905] Rosemary and violet. Available [as a print](. [moralofflowers_rebeccahey_daisy.jpg?resize=680%2C876] Daisy. Available [as a print](. [2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png]There is a flower, a little flower, With silver crest and golden eye, That welcomes every changing hour, And weathers every sky. It smiles upon the lap of May, To sultry August spreads its charms, Lights pale October on his way, And twines December’s arms. [moralofflowers_rebeccahey_forgetmenot.jpg?resize=680%2C929] Forget-me-not. Available [as a print](. [2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png]In vain I searched the garden through,      In vain the meadow gay, For some sweet flower which might to you      A kindly thought convey. One spake too much of hope and bloom For those who know of man the doom ; Another, queen of the parterre, Thorns on her graceful stem did bear; A third, alas ! seemed all too frail For ruder breath than summer gale. I turned me thence to where beneath      The hedgerow’s verdant shade, The lowliest gems of Florals wreath      Their modest charms displayed. Lured by its name, one simple flower From its meek sisterhood I bore, And bade it hasten to impart The breathings of a faithful heart, And plead — “Whatever your future lot, In weal or woe — Forget-me-not.” [moralofflowers_rebeccahey_primrose.jpg?resize=680%2C866] Primrose. Available [as a print](. [moralofflowers_rebeccahey_lily.jpg?resize=680%2C943] Lily of the Valley. Available [as a print](. [moralofflowers_rebeccahey_wallflower.jpg?resize=680%2C892] Wild wallflower. Available [as a print](. [moralofflowers_rebeccahey_violet.jpg?resize=680%2C935] Violet. Available [as a print](. Complement with [The Spirit of the Woods]( — Hey’s poetic encyclopedia of trees, illustrated with her own paintings — and 18th-century artist Sarah Stone’s trailblazing natural history illustrations of [exotic, endangered, and extinct animals]( then revisit a 17th-century English gardener on [what fruit trees can teach us about human nature and relationships](. [Forward to a friend]( Online]( [Like on Facebook]( [Patti Smith on Libraries and the Transformative Love of Books]( [yearofthemonkey_pattismith.jpg?fit=320%2C463]( “Libraries are sanctuaries from the world and command centers onto it,” Rebecca Solnit wrote in reflecting on [how she saved herself by reading](. “A library is a rainbow in the clouds,” Maya Angelou harmonized in recollecting [how a library saved her own life](. Her contemporary and titanic peer Ursula K. Le Guin located the source of that salvation in the portal to personal and intellectual liberty that opens up between the shelves of the public library, between the covers of a book: [“Knowledge sets us free, art sets us free. A great library is freedom.”]( A generation after a little boy named James {NAME} reached for that liberty and [read his way from Harlem to the literary pantheon]( at the local library, a little girl named Patricia Lee Smith read her way from a poor rural community in southern New Jersey to the world’s stage and the world’s heart, soon to become the voice of generations and one of the most original, revolutionary, and generous artists of her time, of our time, and of all time. In [Year of the Monkey]( ([public library]( — her unclassifiable, symphonic exploration of [dreams, love, loss, and mending the broken realities of life]( — Patti Smith recounts how her local childhood library nurtured her inner life, tilling the soil of her becoming. [pattismith_books.jpg?zoom=2&w=680]( In consonance with that lovely parenthetical line from one of Nikki Giovanni’s [poems celebrating libraries and librarians]( — “(You never know what troubled little girl needs a book.)” — Smith writes of the endearing, almost unreasonable devotion with which she sought solace for her nine-year-old troubles amid the stacks: [2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png]Every Saturday I would go to the library and choose my books for the week. One late-autumn morning, despite menacing clouds, I bundled up and walked as always, past the peach orchards, the pig farm and the skating rink to the fork in the road that led to our sole library. The sight of so many books never failed to excite me, rows and rows of books with multicolored spines. I’d spent an inordinate amount of time choosing my stack of books that day, with the sky growing more ominous. At first, I wasn’t worried as I had long legs and was a pretty fast walker, but then it became apparent that there was no way I was going to beat the impending storm. It grew colder, the winds picked up, followed by heavy rains, then pelting hail. I slid the books under my coat to protect them, I had a long way to go; I stepped in puddles and could feel the icy water permeate my ankle socks. When I finally reached home my mother shook her head with sympathetic exasperation, prepared a hot bath and made me go to bed. I came down with bronchitis and missed several days of school. But it had been worth it, for I had my books, among them The Tik-Tok Man of Oz, Half Magic and The Dog of Flanders. Wonderful books that I read over and over, only accessible to me through our library. [Velocity_IsabelleArsenault.jpg?resize=680%2C887] Art by Isabelle Arsenault from [A Velocity of Being: Letters to a Young Reader](. Complement this tiny fragment of the wholly enchanting [Year of the Monkey]( — which crowned my [favorite books of 2019]( — with Oliver Sacks, reflecting on the early character-sculpting role the local library played in his own life, on [the library as a locus of intellectual freedom and community-building]( then revisit Patti Smith on [the two kinds of literary masterpieces and her fifty favorite books](. (One might hope that [letting her spinach get cold]( is now among her qualifying criteria for a favorite book.) [Forward to a friend]( Online]( [Like on Facebook]( donating=loving Every week for more than 13 years, I have been pouring tremendous time, thought, love, and resources into Brain Pickings, which remains free and is made possible by patronage. If you find any joy and solace in my labor of love, please consider supporting it with a donation. And if you already donate, from the bottom of my heart: THANK YOU. monthly donation You can become a Sustaining Patron with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a Brooklyn lunch.  one-time donation Or you can become a Spontaneous Supporter with a one-time donation in any amount. [Start Now](  [Give Now]( [---] You're receiving this email because you subscribed on Brain Pickings. This weekly newsletter comes out on Sundays and offers the week's most unmissable articles. Brain Pickings NOT A MAILING ADDRESS 159 Pioneer StreetBrooklyn, NY 11231 [Add us to your address book]( [unsubscribe from this list](   [update subscription preferences](