Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-p9bg8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T17:33:04.651Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

How Rich's Sunflower and Her Family Bind a Nation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2009

Charles Vandersee
Get access

Extract

As Flower, As Edible Root nourishing Natives and wanderers, and as witness to the nation's work force and wars, Helianthus tuberosus repeatedly drew itself to the attention of Adrienne Rich as she drove across the country:

Late summers, early autumns, you can see something that binds

the map of this country together: the girasol, orange gold-petalled

with her black eye, laces the roadsides from Vermont to California runs the edges of orchards, chain-link fences

milo fields and malls, schoolyards and reservations

truckstops and quarries, grazing ranges, graveyards

of veterans, graveyards of cars hulked and sunk, her tubers the jerusalem artichoke

that has fed the Indians, fed the hobos, could feed us all.

Is there anything in the soil, cross-country, that makes for a plant so generous? (11)

Here in part IV of her impressive long poem “An Atlas of the Difficult World” (1991) Rich does not use the botanist's Latin, and she gives no further details about girasol (Jerusalem artichoke), a member of the sunflower family, all of whose varieties are native to the Americas. She (the plant) thrives everywhere, in places both mainstream and marginal, and being thus omnipresent she can feed people in all walks of life.

Type
Research Article
Information
Prospects , Volume 26 , October 2001 , pp. 575 - 610
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2001

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

WORKS CITED

Adams, Henry. Democracy. 1880. New York: Penguin, 1983.Google Scholar
Agricola, [John de Crévecoeur, J. Hector St]. “American Manufactures.” Pennsylvania Gazette, 06 11, 1788, 3.Google Scholar
Amato, Joseph A.The Great Jerusalem Artichoke Circus: The Buying and Selling of the American Dream. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993.Google Scholar
Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Rev. ed. London: Verso, 1991.Google Scholar
Ariès, Philippe, “L'Histoire des mentalites.” La Nouvelle histoire. Ed. Le Goff, Jacques et al. Paris: Retz-C.E.P.L., 1978: 402–23.Google Scholar
Baechtel, Mark. “Dead Center America.” Washington Post, 01 16, 2000, E1+.Google Scholar
Bailey, L. H., et al. Manual of Cultivated Plants Most Commonly Grown in the Continental United States and Canada. Rev. ed. New York: Macmillan, 1949.Google Scholar
Barkley, T. M., ed. Flora of the Great Plains. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1986.Google Scholar
Belk, Sarah. Around the Southern Table. New York: Galahad, 1991.Google Scholar
Bellow, Saul. The Adventures of Augie March. New York: Viking, 1953.Google Scholar
Bloom, Harold. The American Religion: The Emergence of the Post-Christian Nation. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992.Google Scholar
Branch, Taylor. Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954–63. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988.Google Scholar
Bruce, Philip Alexander. Economic History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century: An Inquiry into the Material Condition of the People, Based upon Original and Contemporaneous Records. 2 vols. New York: Macmillan, 1896.Google Scholar
Burr, Fearing JrField and Garden Vegetables of America. Boston: Crosby and Nichols, 1863.Google Scholar
Cather, Willa. My Ántonia. 1918; rev. ed., 1937; rept. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1995.Google Scholar
Cather, Willa. O Pioneers! 1913; rept. New York: New American Library, 1989.Google Scholar
Cather, Willa. The Song of the Lark. 1915; rept. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1988.Google Scholar
Cisneros, Sandra. The House on Mango Street. 1984. New York: Knopf, 1994.Google Scholar
Clark, Lewis J.Wild Flowers of British Columbia. Sidney, B.C.: Gray's, 1973.Google Scholar
Clarke, Charlotte Bringle. Edible and Useful Plants of California. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cobb, James C.The Most Southern Place on Earth: The Mississippi Delta and the Roots of Regional Identity. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cook, Adrienne. “Dazzling Sunchokes.” Washington Post, 08 20, 1998, Home Section, 15.Google Scholar
Crèvecoeur, J.John de., Hector StLetters from an American Farmer. 1782; rept. New York: Viking, 1981. See also Agricola.Google Scholar
Crites, Gary D. “Domesticated Sunflower in Fifth Millennium B.P. Temporal Context: New Evidence from Middle Tennessee.” American Antiquity 58 (1993): 146–48.Google Scholar
Cruso, Thalassa. To Everything There Is a Season. New York: Knopf, 1973.Google Scholar
Culler, Jonathan. The Pursuit of Signs: Semiotics, Literature, Deconstruction. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1981.Google Scholar
Davis, Francis. The History of the Blues. New York: Hyperion, 1995.Google Scholar
Dent, Tom. Southern Journey: A Return to the Civil Rights Movement. New York: Morrow, 1997.Google Scholar
Dietz, Marjorie J., ed. 10,000 Garden Questions Answered by 20 Experts. 3rd ed.Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1974.Google Scholar
Dimock, Gladys Ogden. Home Ground: Living in the Country. Woodstock, N.Y.: Countryman, 1985.Google Scholar
Dreiser, Theodore. Dawn. 1931; rept. New York: Fawcett, 1965.Google Scholar
Duke, James A. Handbook of Energy Crops. Unpublished, 1983 (http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/duke_energy/Helianthus_tuberosus, 4 pp).Google Scholar
Dunmire, William W., and Tierney, Gail D.. Wild Plants of the Pueblo Province: Exploring Ancient and Enduring Uses. Santa Fe: Museum of New Mexico Press, 1995.Google Scholar
Earle, Alice Morse. Old Time Gardens, Newly Set Forth. New York: Macmillan, 1901.Google Scholar
Escott, Paul D.Slavery Remembered: A Record of Twentieth-Century Slave Narratives. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979.Google Scholar
Faulkner, William. Go Down, Moses. New York: Random House, 1942.Google Scholar
Ferguson, Mary, and Saunders, Richard M.. Canadian Wildflowers Through the Seasons. Toronto: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1982.Google Scholar
Flores, Barbara. The Great Sunflower Book. Berkeley: Ten Speed, 1997.Google Scholar
Frémont, John C., et al. The Expeditions of John Charles Frémont. Ed. Jackson, Donald and Spence, Mary Lee. Vol. 1. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1970.Google Scholar
Frey, Rebecca Blevins. Cartographies of Desire: Captivity, Race, and Sex in the Shaping of an American Nation. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Gibbons, Euell. Stalking the Faraway Places. New York: David McKay, 1973.Google Scholar
Gilmore, Melvin. Uses of Plants by the Indians of the Missouri River Region. Enlarged edition of the 33rd Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology (1919). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991.Google Scholar
Ginsberg, Allen. “Sunflower Sutra” (1956). Collected Poems: 1947–1980. New York: Harper and Row, 1984.Google Scholar
Greeley, Horace. An Overland Journey from New York to San Francisco in the Summer of 1859. New York: Saxton, Barker, 1860; rept. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Gremillion, Kristen J. “Early Agricultural Diet in Eastern North America: Evidence from Two Kentucky Rockshelters.” American Antiquity 61 (1996): 520–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grimm, William Carey. The Illustrated Book of Wildflowers and Shrubs. Mechanicsburg, Pa.: Stackpole, 1993.Google Scholar
Grosvenor, Gilbert H. “Our State Flowers: The Floral Emblems Chosen by the Commonwealths.” National Geographic 31 (1917): 481–517.Google Scholar
Hakim, Joy. Making Thirteen Colonies. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.Google Scholar
Harrington, H. D.Western Edible Wild Plants. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1972.Google Scholar
Hausman, Ethel Hinckley. The Illustrated Encyclopedia of American Wild Flowers. Garden City, N.Y.: Garden City, 1947.Google Scholar
Henshaw, Julia W.Wild Flowers of the North American Mountains. New York: Robert M. McBride, 1915.Google Scholar
Herrick, James W.Iroquois Medical Botany. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1995.Google Scholar
Hill, May Brawley. The Old-Fashioned American Garden, 1865–1915. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1995.Google Scholar
Hughes, Robert. “Of Vincent and Eanum Pig.” Time 129 (04 13, 1987): 80–81.Google Scholar
Hylander, Clarence J.The World of Plant Life. New York: Macmillan, 1947.Google Scholar
Jeffers, Robinson. The Women at Point Sur. 1927; rept. New York: Liveright, 1977.Google Scholar
Jefferson, Thomas. Notes on the State of Virginia. 1861; rept. New York: Harper and Row, 1964.Google Scholar
Kinnell, Galway. “The Last River.” Body Rags. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1967: 33–47.Google Scholar
Kingston, Maxine Hong. Tripmaster Monkey. 1989; rept. New York: Random House, 1990.Google Scholar
Kirkpatrick, Patricia. “Look Around at All of It: An Interview with Adrienne Rich.” Hungry Mind Review 21 (1992): 56–59.Google Scholar
Kirkpatrick, Zoe Merriman. Wildflowers of the Western Plains: A Field Guide. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1992.Google Scholar
Kolodny, Annette. The Lay of the Land: Metaphor as Experience in American Life and Letters. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975.Google Scholar
Krochmal, Arnold, and Krochmal, Connie. A Field Guide to Medicinal Plants. New York: Times Books, 1973Google Scholar
Lauter, Paul et al. , eds. Heath Anthology of American Literature. 2 vols. Lexington, Mass.: Heath, 1990.Google Scholar
Lewis, Anthony, and the New York Times. Portrait of a Decade: The Second American Revolution. New York: Random House, 1964.Google Scholar
Loewen, James W.Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. New York: New, 1995.Google Scholar
Loewen, James W.The Mississippi Chinese: Between Black and White. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971.Google Scholar
Lomax, Alan. The Land Where the Blues Began. New York: Pantheon, 1993.Google Scholar
Martin, Alexander, et al. American Wildlife and Plants: A Guide to Wildlife Food Habits. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1951; rept. New York: Dover, 1961.Google Scholar
Martin, Laura C.Southern Wildflowers. Atlanta: Longstreet, 1989.Google Scholar
Marx, Leo. The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal. New York: Oxford University Press, 1964.Google Scholar
McCord, William. Mississippi: The Long, Hot Summer. New York: Norton, 1965.Google Scholar
McKenzie, James J. “To the Roots: An Interview with Galway Kinnell.” Salmagundi 22–23 (1973): 206–21.Google Scholar
Mercer, Marcia. “America: Not Melting Pot, or Mosaic, or Quilt.” Media General News Service. [Charlottesville, Va.] Daily Progress, 08 3, 1997, D1 +.Google Scholar
Miller, Perry. The New England Mind in the Seventeenth Century. Boston: Beacon, 1939.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Henry. One Man's Garden. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1992.Google Scholar
Morrison, Toni. Sula. New York: Knopf, 1973.Google Scholar
Moulton, Gary E., ed. Journals of the Lewis & Clark Expedition. 11 vols. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983–1997.Google Scholar
Nabhan, Gary Paul. Enduring Seeds: Native American Agriculture and Wild Plant Conservation. New York: North Point, 1989.Google Scholar
Naipaul, V. S.A Turn in the South. New York: Knopf, 1989.Google Scholar
Norton Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Gottesman, Ronald et al. 2 vols. New York: Norton, 1979.Google Scholar
Ottesen, Carole. The Native Plant Primer. New York: Crown, 1995.Google Scholar
Palmer, Robert. Deep Blues. New York: Viking, 1981.Google Scholar
Parry, C. C. “Appendix A: Botany of the Region Along the Route of the Kansas Pacific Railway through Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and California.” New Tracks in North America: A Journal of Travel and Adventure Whilst Engaged in a Survey for a Southern Railroad to the Pacific Ocean During 1867–8. By William Abraham Bell. London: Chapman and Hall, 1870: 521–27.Google Scholar
Peterson, Roger Tory, and McKenny, Margaret. A Field Guide to Wildflowers of Northeastern and North-central North America. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1968.Google Scholar
Phillips, Arthur M. IIIGrand Canyon Wildflowers. Rev ed. Grand Canyon Ariz.: Grand Canyon Natural History Association, 1990.Google Scholar
Piper, Charles V., and Beattie, R. Kent. Flowers of the Northwest Coast. Lancaster, Pa.: New Era, 1915.Google Scholar
Polunin, Oleg. Flowers of Europe: A Field Guide. New York: Oxford University Press, 1969.Google Scholar
Proctor, Rob. Annuals: Yearly Classics for the Contemporary Garden. New York: HarperCollins, 1991.Google Scholar
Rich, Adrienne. “An Atlas of the Difficult World.” An Atlas of the Difficult World: Poems 1988–1991. New York: Norton, 1991: 1–26.Google Scholar
Rich, Adrienne. “Diving into the Wreck.” Diving into the Wreck: Poems 1971–1972. New York: Norton, 1973: 22–24.Google Scholar
Rich, Adrienne. “Yom Kippur.” Your Native Land, Your Life. New York: Norton, 1986: 75–78.Google Scholar
Rich, Adrienne, ed. The Best American Poetry 1996. New York: Simon and Schuster (Scribner), 1996.Google Scholar
Roland, Albert. “Do-It-Yourself: A Walden for the Millions?” American Quarterly 10 (1958): 154–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosenberg, Joel. “Jeremiah and Ezekiel.” The Literary Guide to the Bible. Ed. Alter, Robert and Kermode, Frank. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987: 184–206.Google Scholar
Rowland, Dunbar. History of Mississippi, the Heart of the South. Chicago: S. J. Clarke, 1925.Google Scholar
Salaman, Redcliffe N. “Why ‘Jerusalem’ Artichoke?” Journal of the Royal Horticultural Society 65 (1940): 338–83.Google Scholar
Seymour, Frank Conkling. The Flora of New England: A Manual for the Identification of All Vascular Plants, Including Ferns and Fern Allies and Flower Plants Growing Without Cultivation in New England. Rutland: Charles E. Tuttle, 1969.Google Scholar
Shapiro, David. “For the Evening Land” and commentary. The Best American Poetry 1996. Ed. Rich, Adrienne. New York: Simon and Schuster (Scribner), 1996: 184–85, 279–80. Poem originally in Lingo (West Stockbridge, Mass.).Google Scholar
Sitton, Diane Morey. Sunflowers: Growing, Crafting, and Cooking with the Sunniest of Plants. Salt Lake City: Gibbs Smith, 1995.Google Scholar
Smith, Henry Nash. Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth. New York: Random House, 1950.Google Scholar
Smith, J. Russell, and Phillips, M. Ogden. North America: Its People and the Resources, Development, and Prospects of the Continent as the Home of Man. Rev. ed. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1942; rept. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1969.Google Scholar
Stann, Kap, et al. Deep South. Hawthorne, Australia: Lonely Planet, 1998.Google Scholar
Stille, Alexander. “The Betrayal of History.” New York Review of Books, 06 11, 1998: 15–20.Google Scholar
Sturtevant, Edward Lewis. Sturtevant's Notes on Edible Plants. Ed. Hedrick, U. P.. Albany: J. B. Lyon, 1919; Report of the New York Agricultural Experiment Station for the Year 1919; State of New York Department of Agriculture, 27th Annual Report, vol. 2, part 2; rept. New York: Dover, 1972.Google Scholar
Suckow, Ruth. New Hope. 1942; rept. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1998.Google Scholar
Teale, Edwin Way. Autumn Across America. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1956.Google Scholar
Thoreau, Henry David. The Journals of Henry D. Thoreau. Ed. Torrey, Bradford and Allen, Francis H.. 14 vols. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1906.Google Scholar
Thoreau, Henry David. Walden. 1854. Afterword by Perry Miller. New York: NAL-Signet, 1960.Google Scholar
Torrey, John, and Gray, Asa. A Flora of North America. Vol. 2. New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1842.Google Scholar
Trager, James. The Food Chronology: A Food Lover's Compendium of Events and Anecdotes, from Prehistory to the Present. New York: Henry Holt, 1995.Google Scholar
Twain, Mark. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. 1884; rept. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1967 (ed. Marx, Leo).Google Scholar
Updike, John. “Sunflower.” The Carpentered Hen and Other Tame Creatures. New York: Knopf, 1957.Google Scholar
Vovelle, Michel. Ideologies and Mentalities. Tr. Eamon, O'Flaherty. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990.Google Scholar
Walton, Anthony. Mississippi: An American Journey. New York: Knopf, 1996.Google Scholar
Weatherford, Jack. Indian Givers: How the Indians of the Americas Transformed the World. New York: Crown, 1988.Google Scholar
Whitman, Walt. Leaves of Grass. Ed. Bradley, Sculley and Blodgett, Harold W.. 1855; rept. New York: Norton, 1973.Google Scholar
Whittemore, Katharine. “How a Weed Once Scorned Became the Flower of the Hour.” Smithsonian 27 (08 1996): 52–61.Google Scholar
Williams, William Carlos. In the American Grain. New York: New Directions, 1925.Google Scholar
Wilson, Rob. “Techno-euphoria and the Discourse of the National Sublime.” National Identities and Post-Americanist Narratives. Ed. Pease, Donald E.. Durham: Duke University Press, 1994: 205–29.Google Scholar
Winterowd, Wayne. Annuals for Connoisseurs: Classics and Novelties from Abel-moschus to Zinnia. New York: Prentice-Hall, 1992.Google Scholar
Zelinsky, Wilbur. Nation into State: The Shifting Symbolic Foundations of American Nationalism. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988.Google Scholar