{"id":1419,"date":"2010-02-22T16:37:36","date_gmt":"2010-02-22T20:37:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/?p=1419"},"modified":"2015-06-05T14:20:37","modified_gmt":"2015-06-05T18:20:37","slug":"poppies-in-february","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/?p=1419","title":{"rendered":"Poppies in February"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><big><center><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/i52.photobucket.com\/albums\/g23\/botanizeme\/222pop005.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Photobucket\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Of the many things I don&#8217;t do that cause me a small pang from time to time, like speak a language other than English,<br \/>\nkeeping a book of poetry on my reading table ranks probably in the mid to low range on the list of regrets.   A small twinge, barely a pang,<br \/>\nunless someone quotes Rilke or Rimbaud or really any poet they truly love.  Then my twinge swells to a full-size pang.  For a while at least.<br \/>\nSoon I&#8217;ll be back to my mostly non-fiction reading habits.<\/p>\n<p>Yet I can&#8217;t look at a poppy without having the incantation &#8220;little hell flames,&#8221; pop in my head, from Sylvia Plath&#8217;s poem on poppies from <em>Ariel<\/em>.<br \/>\nAnd I&#8217;m one that <i>never<\/i> remembers anything I&#8217;ve read verbatim, so this doubly astonishes me.   In fact, I had to look up the title, which<br \/>\nis  &#8220;Poppies in July,&#8221; a cold, bitter poem of betrayal, of which I retained just those three words that, 20 years later, incongruously enough,<br \/>\nI still mentally recite in delight at the sight of&#8230;.poppies.<\/p>\n<p>Which just proves that, to paraphrase Dorothy Parker, when asked to use the word &#8220;horticulture&#8221; in a sentence, you can lead a horticulturist<br \/>\nto culture&#8230;.but you can&#8217;t make her miserable with sad poems when spring is here.<\/p>\n<p><\/big><\/center><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Of the many things I don&#8217;t do that cause me a small pang from time to time, like speak a language other than English, keeping a book of poetry on my reading table ranks probably in the mid to low &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/?p=1419\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[35,36],"tags":[14,13,15],"class_list":["post-1419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ephemera","category-plant-portraits","tag-dorothy-parker","tag-poppies","tag-sylvia-plath"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paNJ2E-mT","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1419"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1419\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65840,"href":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1419\/revisions\/65840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}