I first came upon the word georgic on a cold, winter evening in a cabin at the McDowell Colony in rural New Hampshire. I’d decided to spend two weeks there reading the dictionary in preparation for creating Abecedarium:NYC.  It wasn’t until months later that my dear friend Michele Lowrie, a Latin Classicist, informed me that the word referred to one of the greatest agricultural works of literature ever written, the 2000 year old epic poem by Virgil simply called The Georgics I - V.  Reading it was utterly transportive, like arriving hungry to a field in anticipation of a bountiful harvest. 

In early spring-tide, when the icy drip
Melts from the mountains hoar, and Zephyr’s breath
Unbinds the crumbling clod, even then ’tis time…

Spring is back. Upstate is melting.

During spring break I went on a delightful hike with my family and friends, along the Ashokan Reservoir. The reservoir, like others in the area, was created in the early 1900s, I learned. It flooded the town of Ashokan and surrounding farms, to quench the thirst of the big city, downstate.

Home from the hike, looking at the photos taken that walk among as of yet leafless trees, frost and thaw, I feel the need to learn more about this watering can of the five boroughs.

My Brooklyn window looks out on a budding magnolia, and I know the garden hoses around town are starting to be unfurled by the thousands, as I write this.

Here is a list of words beginning with G from a forty year old dictionary I pored over during a residency at the MacDowell Colony. It was fascinating and disconcerting to discover how many amazing words have now disappeared not only from our usage but also from this etymological archive. Gone. We chose georgic — which sent me to a community garden in Brooklyn to reflect on agriculture in the city.

The Georgics, published in 29 BC, is the second major work by the Latin poet Virgil. Its ostensible subject is rural life and farming and the work is generally categorized as a “didactic poem”.
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgics

Project Guttenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext95/geore10.txt

Excerpt from Virgil’s Georgic I:

“In early spring-tide, when the icy drip

Melts from the mountains hoar, and Zephyr’s breath

Unbinds the crumbling clod, even then ’tis time;

Press deep your plough behind the groaning ox,

And teach the furrow-burnished share to shine.

That land the craving farmer’s prayer fulfils,

Which twice the sunshine, twice the frost has felt;

Ay, that’s the land whose boundless harvest-crops

Burst, see! the barns.”