The Marsh Queen Quotes

“In college I had a feminist botany professor who said that the properties of herbs have been documented largely by men, but the knowledge has been passed down in an oral tradition among women, one generation to the next. Even when girls were deemed unworthy of literacy, the rhymes they heard their mothers recite, like I borage give courage, or Nettle out, dock in, dock remove the nettle sting, made them bearers of a rich knowledge. The woman in a village who knew about herbs was called the Wise Woman.”
― Virginia Hartman, The Marsh Queen

“Before we leave, Ruth tells Adlai, "Loni's my wild child, you know." She hugs me goodbye, puts her lips close to my ear, and whispers, "Rock-a-bye, my baby girl."
We get back in Adlai's truck and I stare into the middle distance. Way too much is traveling through my brain. Adlai leans over, and when I turn, he kisses me softly on the mouth. He tastes like salt and spearmint and something elemental, like a smooth stone.
When we drive on, my mother's words echo--- baby girl--- and I see the impression of a cockleshell, my newborn ear, on her young arm.”
― Virginia Hartman, The Marsh Queen

“Marigold (Calendula)--- Herb of the Sun.
Not a perennial. Apricot color like cosmos = rangy and tall, a weed. Calendula = composed. Loni's flower”
― Virginia Hartman, The Marsh Queen

“A leaf, large and rough, a thorny stalk, blue flower. I borage bring courage. Than a saw-toothed leaf. Lemon balm. Soothe all troublesome care. Marigold---cureth the trembling of harte. Perhaps their medicine will cross through the cell walls of my drawing hand.
The plants grow into a schematic, a garden, geometrically arranged. I consult the crackly herbals by my bed. Chamomile, catmint, sorrel. In Latin: Matricaria chamomilla, Nepeta X faassenii, Rumex acetosa. I get out of bed, retrieve my colored pencils, come back.
The smell of earth fills the room. Root and flower and loam. Decay and regeneration. Mullein and comfrey, costmary, feverfew, betony. I sink into the earth, below verbena and lavender, descending as I draw.”
― Virginia Hartman, The Marsh Queen

“When the guy finally pins the alligator on its back and rubs its thorax to lull it into semiconsciousness, it occurs to me the whole appeal of this spectacle is vaguely sexual. Subduing a beast by turning him over and rubbing his belly until he's calm.”
― Virginia Hartman, The Marsh Queen

“He gave me the birds, and he gave me the swamp. At some point he stopped trying to teach me the finer points of fishing. He saw what I liked about the place and supplied a way to describe it. "Pond chicken," he'd say, at the movement of something purple in the reeds, or "Kingfisher," when a small rocket flew past and ahead of us, close to the water.
Once, in the same tone of voice, he said, "Swamp girl."
I turned, quick, to see.
"That's you, Loni Mae." He looked at me sideways and laughed. Shafts of sunlight shone through the Spanish moss above him. "Or no. I got a better name for you. The Marsh Queen.”
― Virginia Hartman, The Marsh Queen

“You know, Loni Mae, sometimes a person can be impatient with you, but that does not mean she don't care for you.”
― Virginia Hartman, The Marsh Queen

“Oh, Loni, I don't have the patience to read anymore. My eyes get so tired."
So what the hell will she do all day? Watch game shows? "All right then, I'll read to you." I open one of her poetry books and read a favorite passage. "The work of the world is common as mud---"
She interrupts me. "That's um... that's um... Marge Piercy." And then she goes on to recite the next three, transcendent lines.
I nod. "You got it, Mom." So she's not completely gone. I just have to stay calm when she's cranky, and read to her. Maybe my dad was right, all those years ago, when he encouraged me to see an invisible reservoir of good in my mother. It's like waiting for those cool pockets of air in the steaming swamp---they're unpredictable, but ever welcome.”
― Virginia Hartman, The Marsh Queen

“Just as I'm about to step into the canoe, an egret flies low over the glassy water. The bird is white all over with delicate wisps at the head and tail. We both stop to look. The egret tucks her long neck close to her body, and her wings nearly touch the shining surface. It's a mirror---egret above, egret below. She's followed by a series of dark circles, the air from each wingbeat lifting the water.
"What's that one called?" Adlai asks, though he surely must know.
"Snowy," I say. "Snowy egret.”
― Virginia Hartman, The Marsh Queen

“Paracelsus believed that each plant was a terrestrial star, and each star a spiritualized plant.”
― Virginia Hartman, The Marsh Queen

“Thyme, or 'dawn in paradise,'
I go there with the dead.
They die by someone else's hand
Whose souls sleep in my bed.”
― Virginia Hartman, The Marsh Queen

“One of the herbals I brought home from the library had a fascinating chapter on herbs and their connection to desire. For Elizabethans, a bundle of rosemary helped arrange an assignation, and an apple suggested libidinous intent. I picture Adlai's reaction to a sprig of rosemary left on his counter, or a juicy Fuji. Better yet, a "Florida butterfly" orchid from the swamp, since the same herbal had an entire page on the sensual properties of the orchid. It called the flower female----"open and inviting"----the root, male----"tuberous and reaching"----and the entire plant "hot and moist in operation.”
― Virginia Hartman, The Marsh Queen

“The gallinule's candy-corn bill--- yellow at the tip, orange toward the eye---points at the waterline, and the blue and green of the feathers glint in the sunlight. I sketch the light blue cap and the oval body, hinting at its iridescence. The bird pokes her head sharply into the water, swallows, and beings to meander. She walks across floating lilies, pad to pad, and then into the reeds until I can't see her anymore, no matter how I steer the canoe. When she's gone, I look at my drawing. "Hee-hee!" I say aloud, sketching a few more quick studies to indicate her motion and the intensity of her stare, with notes on the deep iris blue of the head and breast, the aqua of the back and wings graduating to olive at the tips, and underneath an inky black.”
― Virginia Hartman, The Marsh Queen

“I come around the curve of a hardwood hammock to witness two herons, a great white and a great blue, having what looks like a territorial dispute. I slow the canoe. Another white heron stands in the shallows a short way off, either fishing or waiting to see who'll win. The white and the blue keep flying up, each trying to warn the other off, angling their wings so the light catches them first one way and then another.
I sketch them fast, trying to record the unintended grace of their motion as well as the force of their intention. While they're concerned with power and territory and fishing rights, they have no idea how stunning the exchange makes them look. The blue heron, in particular, shows me the richness of her color from every angle.”
― Virginia Hartman, The Marsh Queen

“I draw the blue heron flying up and protecting her territory. The purest images come as I wake, and I need to catch them before they disappear. As I sketch, the old story my father used to tell echoes in my brain. No wonder the fairy queen of the marsh chose this bird to inhabit. The heron is regal in her blue, asserting her will with shimmering, outstretched wings.”
― Virginia Hartman, The Marsh Queen

“Look, everybody lies. You're the only pillar of truth I know."
"Me and the woman I end up with."
Oof.”
― Virginia Hartman, The Marsh Queen

“People who are honest never do think the folks they admire can be so far from what they seem.”
― Virginia Hartman, The Marsh Queen

“I have dealt with killahs before."
I study her face. She is not speaking figuratively.
Her dark eyes hold mine. "I told you where I came from."
I do some quick math. In the 90's, around the time my world was shattered by my father's death, Sierra Leone was brutalized by civil war. Mariama would have been a young adult, watching everything around her being blown to pieces. I learned it as a fact in a college classroom. Mariama lived it. How little thought I've given to the life of this woman I've come to depend on.”
― Virginia Hartman, The Marsh Queen

“Delores, the Wise Woman of Botany, told me while I was in Washington that every seven years, employees of my pay grade are entitled to a sabbatical, and I'm two years late in taking mine. She helped me fill out the form. I listed my purpose: "to study the birds of the southeastern United States with an emphasis on the marshlands of Florida."
Hugh Adamson sputtered an objection, but he couldn't do a thing. Apparently, the sabbatical is a long-standing Smithsonian policy that would actually take an Act of Congress to reverse. I didn't write on the form of my other intention: to freelance, get my name out there, and see whether Florida is where I belong.”
― Virginia Hartman, The Marsh Queen

“Slipping past a patch of reeds, I slow to look for the purple gallinule, Porphyrula martinica. My father called it a pond chicken. No dead bird skin can capture the way this creature walks weightlessly over lily pads and floating reeds. That's why I've come out today, after all---to get the gizz of one purple pond chicken. I skim close to every clump of bulrush, wild rice, and pickerelweed. For a moment, the only sound is my paddle and the water. Then here come the moorhens, cousins to the gallinule, swimming around me. Their beaks are white, and their feathers are black, where the gallinule's are blue, violet, and rainbow-shine green. They start up with their high, collective cackle. "Listen to 'em laughing at us," my dad would say.
"Get out there," Estelle said, "before you lose touch." What exactly was that supposed to mean?
I spy a limpkin among the reeds, poking its tweezer-like beak in the mud for apple snails. Crying birds, they call them, because of the baleful sound they make trying to get a mate into their nest. It almost sounds like a baby's wail. I do a quick sketch of the limpkin's long legs and slender, curving bill, the variegation of its brown and white feathers.”
― Virginia Hartman, The Marsh Queen

“The hallway leading to Botany is lined with cabinets full of dried plants laid out on acid-free paper. Today, I imagine them as a vertical garden, orchids and epiphytes dripping from the sides, a phantom scent of humid forest.”
― Virginia Hartman, The Marsh Queen

“As departments, we aren't very respectful of one another. The geologists are the Rock People and Delores and Ginger are the Plant People. Here in Ornithology, we're the Bird People, the ichthyologists are the Fish People, the entomologists are the Bug People, those in Paleo are the Bone People, and Anthro is just Antho, because otherwise we'd have to call them the People People.”
― Virginia Hartman, The Marsh Queen

“To regain my equilibrium, I head for the corridor of bird skins. These are not taxidermied birds, not cute in any way. Still, it comforts me to open the wide, flat drawers and see them there, even if they are tied at the feet and devoid of the life conveyed in the average field guide. Ornithologists, it turns out, are both preservationists and murderers, learning how to scoop out a bird's innards and keep the feathers on. But as a bird skin, if properly prepared, can serve as a reference into the next century and beyond. Like this drawer full of cardinals: juveniles, males, females, specimens with winter plumage, summer plumage, and every variety within the varieties.”
― Virginia Hartman, The Marsh Queen

“Revelers in green stumbled from pub to pub as I drove away yesterday from springtime in Washington, a collage of the organic and the man-made--- redbud and sidewalk, dogwood and car. Small trees in the easement showed feathery pink blossoms.
I've left the delicacy of spring for a hot, sodden green, the cruise control carrying me south through Virginia and the Carolinas, Georgia, and farther on toward the place where Florida's panhandle curves in and resort beaches fade into a coastline of dense and mangrove and fingerling waterways. Slightly inland from the Gulf sits my hometown of Tenetkee, where the water transitions slowly to land.”
― Virginia Hartman, The Marsh Queen

“The word "gizz" would shock the Tallahassee Ladies Guild, but despite its homonym, it's a common usage among bird artists. Like "gist," but with more substance---a life force, the spirit that reaches beyond the brushstroke to the vitality of the bird.”
― Virginia Hartman, The Marsh Queen

“Fragrances rise up---the thyme's spicy astringency and the fuzzy menthol of the sage, the chamomile's daisy-petal smell and the piney cool rosemary. The lavender, not yet in flower, is surprisingly mute. I direct the mist toward the basil, and the aroma jumps up like a lemon tree eating a pizza.”
― Virginia Hartman, The Marsh Queen

“They stuck with the giraffe theme, sprinkling hay on my seat in homeroom, putting kibble through the slots of my locker, and posting a picture of a giraffe next to my campaign poster for student council president. They were so pissed when I adopted the giraffe as my campaign logo---Vote Loni: A Head Above the Crowd---and won.”
― Virginia Hartman, The Marsh Queen

“I hate to tell you, honey, but this won't snag you a striped bass."
I take my change, grab the binoc strap, and stuff the squishy pink lure into the pocket of my jeans. "Oh, I know. This is for something else. I wouldn't use anything but a topwater plug for catchin' stripers." I'm not even sure how I know this.
There's a change in the shopkeeper's face. R-E-S-P-E-C-T. Worth the $2.75 I've just spent on this silly lure.”
― Virginia Hartman, The Marsh Queen

“The public space of the museum is not my favorite, loud and full of tourists and school groups and hungry hordes. Their curiosity is endearing---they're acolytes for the natural world. And the marble gleams with architectural detail and precious objects all around. But on these, my gray days, entering the building carries the weight of death: all the specimens, thousands of carcasses of every species, stuffed or otherwise retrieved from oblivion so we can know them, yet all dead. The birds I draw and paint, all dead. On these days, my only defense is to imagine every pinned butterfly taking wing, every stuffed marsupial waking up, every preserved plant specimen blooming and carpeting the marble floor like a time-lapse forest, and every bird coming to life, flying up to the dome and away. On the days when the fog comes and hooks into my gut like a sharp-toothed parasite, these visions can save me.
The steadier, more consistent salvation, of course, is the work. I can lose myself for hours drawing, for instance, the common loon, with its inky head, white banding at the neck, and an intricacy of pin dots and fractured rectangles cascading across the wings. With the right precision, I can bring the deadness of a bird skin to a striking facsimile of life.”
― Virginia Hartman, The Marsh Queen

“The Beverly Hillbillies?" Roger says.
"Yeah," I say. "Call it therapy for the sleep-deprived."
"Really?" He shakes his head. "A bunch of hicks jumping around acting stupid?"
I stiffen. My acquired Yankee accent may sound like his, but I don't appreciate it when people from up north move south for the warm weather and then disrespect southerners. I recite the thesis from my freshman television studies paper. "Listen, Roger, The Beverly Hillbillies is based on a classic archetype: the stranger in a strange land."
"Oh yeah?" he says.
I lean against the kitchen doorway and hook one pink slipper over the other. "You see, the viewer identifies with the residents of Beverly Hills, who live by the rules of the 'regular' world. But Jed and Granny and Elly May reverse our expectations. We end up empathizing with them because our own cultural norms prove cold-hearted and illogical."
"This is so interesting," he says, checking his watch.
"Yes, it is, Roger, because we have come to understand that the naïve but kind 'hicks' are wiser than those who consider themselves sophisticated and smart.”
― Virginia Hartman, The Marsh Queen