SPIRITUAL focus on books February 9, 2004 Issue

George Washington Carver: A portrait in poems

By Bettie Gray Staff Editor

Far back on a low shelf of my local big-name bookstore, Marilyn Nelson's Carver: a life in poems nevertheless caught my browsing eye. Some treasures can be discovered only when you're on your knees. A Newbery Honor Book seal adorns the cover of the book, just above a Coretta Scott King Honor Award seal. The collection of poems was also a National Book Award finalist and received a Boston Globe—Horn Book award. The back cover carries words of praise from the School Library Journal, poet Nikki Giovanni, and others. It's definitely a winner.

Only 103 pages long, with 59 poems, and including historical notes and photos for background, this is a handsome book. The titles draw you in: "Arachis Hypogaea," "Washboard Wizard," "How a Dream Dies."

Born a slave in the state of Missouri, quickly orphaned, and raised by the couple who had owned his mother, Carver, a quick study in anything he cared to investigate, set out on his own in his early teens in search of an education. Talented in art and music, he finally focused his genius on botany and agriculture. In "Drifter," Carver describes how he chose his life's work: "Something says find out / why rain falls, what makes corn proud / and squash so humble...." While teaching at Alabama's Tuskegee Institute, Carver developed countless uses for soilenriching crops such as cowpeas, sweet potatoes, and peanuts (Arachis hypogaea). The student of Mary Baker Eddy's Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures might wonder if the author was thinking of Carver's scientific investigations when she wrote, "The astronomer will no longer look up to the stars,—he will look out from them upon the universe; and the florist will find his flower before its seed" (p. 125).