Adult Education Featured Course: Wallis Wilde-Menozzi

Posted in Adult Education on May 6 2013, by Lansing Moore

In partnership with the Sarah Lawrence Writing Institute, The New York Botanical Garden is pleased to co-sponsor a unique class lead by author Wallis Wilde-Menozzi, a prolific writer, essayist, and poet. This unique class, “Messages of Late Spring: A Two-Day Writing Workshop” on May 18 and 19 will make use of the unique landscape of the Botanical Garden.

Wilde-Menozzi will lead students throughout Garden grounds, including the Thain Family Forest, Azalea Garden, and the newly opened Native Plant Garden to encourage students to ask questions like, “What are the messages of spring, ‘the cruelest month,’ and yet, what does the message of transformation elicit How can it be put into words?”

Wilde-Menozzi is the author most recently of two books. The first, The Other Side of the Tiber, is a memoir of her many years spent living in Italy. That experience also serves as the backdrop for her second new book, Toscanelli’s Ray, a novel set in Florence.

She shared her thoughts on writing, nature, and a life spent abroad.

I grew up in Wisconsin, where, at the time, we had distinct seasons that affected one’s feelings, rhythms, activities. Parma, Italy, the place I live, has seasons very different from the Midwest and the east and west coasts in America, where I also spent many years as an adult.

Italy has devastated much of its nature, since the land has been continuously populated for thousands of years. The concept of wilderness barely exists except as a historical one. The landscape has been touched by nature and man, modeled and remodeled. So nature is very much a part of human reckoning, a part of a definition of humanity and society.

There are stories of all kinds linked with nature: myths, religious interpretations, the scientific narratives, as well as poetry, philosophy and prose … Rites celebrating harvest and spring have seeped through Italian culture; seasons are often marked by folk festivals, religious rituals and celebrations … I reckon with time and seasonal changes that affect consciousness and adaptation.

 In New York City, as seasons come, the core of life still takes place in man-made spaces and rhythms set by commerce. The New York Botanical Gardens offer a place to explore and to rest, to revel ,and to make links: I like the idea that writing can make us stop for a while and also make us journey. I wanted us as writers to give spring its due and to attach it to something personal.

I love the seasons. Rich suggestions about our lives come from nature and its changes … Nature’s beauty, power, destructive force, its use for scaling time, its mystery, feed into a larger sense of order, change and meaning in life.

My husband is a biologist, an ecologist, so his viewpoint, his take on details, as well as my more subjective interpretations make nature a central focus in our daily life. I have published nonfiction, memoir, a novel, and much poetry. What nature is about is a theme in all my work. Beyond its scientific and academic functions, places like the Garden can provide an inspirational, even therapeutic environment for creative pursuits.

 This unique class is sure to sell out, so reserve your spot soon. For more information on all the Garden’s Adult Education offerings, visit nybg.org/adulted.