01

Early Spring East of Town


The best time for a poet is when spring is new

When willows turn gold but not completely

If you wait until the Royal Woods look like brocade

The whole town will be out gawking at flowers

— Qu Yuan, somewhere around 200 BC, translated by the author Red Pine in Poems Of The Masters, copyright 2003, Copper Canyon Press


‍ Welcome to the Botanarchy Hotline Episode 1: The Best Time For A Poet Is When Spring Is New. It’s the Spring Equinox 2025, I’m drunk on the scent of chainlink jasmine, and today we explore the questions: Why here? Why now? Why poets?

The here and the now can best be illuminated by the concept of topophilia, which was coined by poet WH Auden and popularized by geographer Yi-fu Tuan. The word topophilia literally means ‘love of place.’ But to say merely ‘love of place’ betrays the vast intimacies the word contains, for to love a place means you court its ordinariness and you woo its banalities, you see the landscape around you without makeup in its period underwear, and with worshipful eyes you exclaim “how magnificent you are, lover!”



 

Topophilia evokes the bond between people and place, the environments that shape our lives and the various cultural and natural histories that a place ensconces. To be a topophile is to know in your bones what a vast privilege it is to be included in the coterie of elm fronds, mountain ridges, and lawn shrooms that surround you, to listen with bated breath to the stories of the soil and the exploits of the architecture.

There’s a magical process that occurs in the Venn diagram where the specific topography of a lived body intersects with the local environment. Memories embed themselves like mycelia in the stucco. Through worshipful adoration, or sometimes, merely just attention, senses become sorcery and PLACE comes alive, a steward of the shared experiences between humans, buildings, and the more-than-human world.

Though the poetics of place are forever on my mind, topophilia always beseeches me this time of year. Spring is nature’s debutante ball after all, the season that groundhogs and humans alike crawl out of the hole they’ve been living in and cower sheepishly in the sun to ponder the pros and cons of venturing out. So here we venture, forward - and with gusto. In springtime, the Spirit Of Place begs you to come hither, and you must graciously acquiesce.

(Cont’d below)