My Favorite Plant

by Jamaica Kincaid

1998 · 333 pages

flowers
anecdotes
authors
gardening
gardeners
cultivated plants

Keep track of it on your own bookshelf.

About this book

A delightful compendium of writing on plants.

The passion for gardening and the passion for words come together in this inspired anthology, a collection of essays on topics as diverse as beans and roses, by writers who garden and by gardeners who write. Among the contributors are Christopher Lloyd, on poppies; Marina Warner, who remembers the Guinée rose; and Henri Cole, who offers poems on the bearded iris and on peonies. There is also an explanation of the sexiness of castor beans from Michael Pollan and an essay from Maxine Kumin on how, as Henry David Thoreau put it, one "[makes] the earth say beans instead of grass." Most of the essays are new in print, but Colette, Katharine S. White, D. H. Lawrence, and several other old favorites make appearances. Jamaica Kincaid, the much-admired writer and a passionate gardener herself, rounds up this diverse crew. A wonderful gift for green thumbs, My Favorite Plant is a happy collection of fresh takes on old friends.

Other contributors include:

Hilton Als

Mary Keen

Ken Druse

Duane Michals

Michael Fox

David Raffeld

Ian Frazier

Graham Stuart Thomas

Daniel Hinkley

Wayne Winterrowd

Quotes by Jamaica Kincaid

From Wikiquote

plunge ahead, put one foot in front of the other, straighten your back and your shoulders and everything else that is likely to slump, buck up and go forward, and in this way, every obstacle, be it physical or only imaged, falls face down in obeisance and in absolute defeat...
I've come to think that the traditional way of writing is the artificial way that that's not the way things work at all. It's not the way thinking works.
I don’t like to hear people speaking in my work. I like reading it, and I marvel at people who can do it well. And there’s something when you see it done well. It’s just so terrific. But I’m not able to do it.