Monday, October 6, 2008

Spice of Life

While making dinner the other night, I was searching online for information on spices, which brought me to the Enspicelopedia. From allspice to white pepper, this online resource provides a description, uses, origin, and folklore for various spices and herbs. I especially like the folklore section (must be the writer in me). Did you know that Romans believed cinnamon's fragrance sacred and burned it at funerals? Or that the name parsley comes from the Greek word petros, meaning stone, because the plant was often found growing among rocks?

I think my delight in finding the site stems from my love of reference books...dictionaries, thesauruses, encyclopedias. From early on, I've loved scanning reference books (and in recent years, online sites), looking for something but not knowing what. Maybe it's the brevity of the entries or the fact you can open the book to any page (hmm...sort of like poetry). Maybe it's simply my admitted love of lists.

Often when I need to jump-start a poem--whether looking for a hook to start a new poem or fresh insight to feed the revision process--I'll head to the dictionary or encyclopedia. Getting to the root of a word or event or thing clarifies the word/event/thing. Such research frequently cracks open the poem. Although I've been doing this for a while, I'm still surprised that by studying the elementary aspects of something, I can find a way to grow the poem into something quite complex and multi-layered. But life is filled with those pleasant incongruities.

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