Eclogues in a Mustard Seed Garden
In the age of pandemic, poetry refuses to budge in its commitment to hospitality for all, and with Eclogues in a Mustard Seed Garden, gleeful Glenn Mott arrives with a quiver of eclogues, couplets, Zen epigrams, and you-name-it literary mischief. The fun is all ours. A China scholar and translator, Mott was the recipient of a Davis Fellowship for Peace from Middlebury College, and was a Fulbright Scholar at Tsinghua University in Beijing.
CEREMONY
A doyenne of the arts was offended. Her quickly drawn fantasy of
my youth had not been accepted, and she would not withdraw
it, continuing to assert that I had grown up as someone she had
compared me to, flattering and aspirational. Not accepting
her fantasy for me was an assault on modesty, but also on her
imagination. She implied I was not clever enough to see that
she had invented for me a past that I should adopt as being more
plausible and attractive than the reality. Even if it didn’t jibe, she
knew the myth would carry me better, take me farther, make me
more welcome to her group of believers. Who was I to refuse …
Reviewed by
Matt Sutherland
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