RECIPES FROM MY GARDEN

Maril charts the connections between herbs, cooking, and memory in this collection of poetry and prose.

Nothing stirs a memory quite like an herb fresh from the garden. The deep green color, the smell, the taste; for Maril they bring to mind a lifetime of dishes, from childhood spaghetti to new culinary experiments. There’s mint, the “troublemaker in the garden” seizing “every inch of available space.” Parsley, served as part of the Passover meal and dipped in salt water, “A table ritual for everyone / Our food dipped in tears.” Basil tastes like summer, cilantro like “the universe.” Rosemary grows all year and has a dozen uses. (“Did you know rosemary tea makes an excellent hair rinse?”) Maril’s garden and kitchen proved sanctuaries during the pandemic, a place to reflect and create in a time of confusion and destruction. While slicing into the “asymmetrical curves” of tomatoes and spicing “pleasant, bland, refreshing” cucumbers with salt, pepper, and vinegar, she considers the time her mother bought a bargain dress at a department store, and how Maril found it years later when sorting through her mother’s things. Or the time she complimented a painting by her father when she was a girl—a painting of a man holding two balloons leading a woman on a white horse—which he gave to her as a housewarming gift years later. In these poems and micro essays, Maril ably mingles sense and memory, nature and biography, to sketch out the parameters of her world. The essays ruminate on specific memories or objects, like this one about her grandmother’s repoussé pitcher: “I like the concept of pushing outwards to stand one’s ground. I think of push-ups. Opposing gravity…The garden shapes on the pitcher’s midsection are yielding yet firm.” The poems are nearly as conversational. “The grass came up to our waists. / Bare armed, we swam through dandelions and choke weed / Ignoring welts and scratches.” It’s a quiet book, but one in which many gardeners and cooks will likely see themselves.

A meditative collection on the restorative nature of herbs.