Pick of the Issue this week is Amy Goldwasser’s wonderful “Wet Ink,” a Talk story about ink foraging in Central Park. It begins,
On a recent drizzly Tuesday morning, a small group of ink enthusiasts—already rain-slicked, under umbrellas and ponchos—stood on Gapstow Bridge, in Central Park, admiring a brilliant-pink pokeweed bush.
I read that and just kept going, devouring the piece in one delicious gulp. The group’s leader is Jason Logan, founder of the Toronto Ink Company. Goldwasser says of him, “Logan speaks like a laid-back chemist, using words like “petrichor,” the earthy scent produced when rain falls on dry soil. He carried a backpack filled with ink pots and collection bags.”
The piece glints with beautiful natural colors: “fuchsia stems,” “scarlet berries,” “red cardinal,” “goldenrod.” My favourite passage describes a batch of ink made from “five varieties of acorn boiled with rust from various sources—nuts and bolts, wire, brackets—and a drop of gum arabic. It came out a complicated silver-gray.”
Goldwasser enacts the foraging she describes, creating a colourful prose poem from found materials. The result is pure readerly bliss.
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Wonderful. Thank you so much for the link.
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