Carver: A Life in Poems [Hardcover]

Carver the man overcame severe hardship and the prejudices of others to achieve great things. Living in a time when opportunities were few and far between for American Blacks, and slavery was a vivid recollection, Carver blazed a trail that few have been able to even approach, let alone top, since then. Even though he dealt with his share of racism, not every person not of African-American ancestry was unkind to him. Given the least of all of his peers, black or white, Carver went on to achieve the most in life. In spite of the hardships, the racism, and even the slights and insults of his own people, he left behind a legacy of good work, compassion, and technical accomplishment that stands the test of time. As such, Carver takes a solid place among the great minds of antiquity- from Imhotep, Egypt's greatest builder, to Confucius, China's greatest thinker and statesman.

Although Carver's array of inventions is impressive, his ingenuity and knack for turning what others see as worthless into something valuable, as in the poems 'Chemistry 101' and 'The Wild Garden' and 'God's Little Workshop', is truly astounding. Carver had tremendous impact in a host of scientific disciplines- agronomy, botany, chemistry, and plant pathology to name a few. For me, Carver's life demonstrates the importance of a creative and spiritual base. Carver could not have developed the hundreds of practical uses for the 'goober', or peanut-the plant that African slaves brought to the United States, and that White farmers fed to their animals before eating themselves- if he did not have a highly developed creative side. Moreover, his unyielding faith in the Creator, and his reliance on his faith in times of great peril and suffering, enabled him to endure what I and most other people would consider to be the unendurable. Carver's creativity and great spiritual faith gave him the inspiration to make practical use of those things that others considered worthless. In many ways, Carver was the unassailable prototype of the entrepreneurial alchemist- he created something of value out of literally nothing. Professor Carver's many achievements clearly demonstrate the importance of the study of economic botany.

I would like to add that four of his most important contributions to agricultural science- resting the land, crop rotations, application of riparian sediments and the use of legumes to replenish the vital nutrients of intensively cultivated and depleted soils, closely parallel the ecological practices of the great agrarian societies of Asia and Central and South America. The Native Americans, and their Asian compatriots, were well aware of the benefits of these practices, and had developed strong, stable and successful agricultural methods which in turn allowed for the flowering of some of history's greatest civilizations- the Inca, the Maya and the Aztec cultures. In fact, as F H King pointed out in his groundbreaking work, Farmers of Forty Centuries, at the beginning of the 20th century, the farmers of Asia had been using these techniques continuously to maintain and perpetuate the cultivation of the same plots of land, feeding increasing numbers of their people, for over four thousand years. In effect, these ancient farmers had developed sustainable farming practices and projected them four millennia into the present. In this way, I see Professor Carver as not only the Father of the Peanut industry, he is, and rightly so, The Father of Sustainable Agriculture in America.

It is both refreshing and heart-warming to me to know that an African-American man of science can also be a Renaissance Man in the fullest sense of the word. Gifted in the arts and gifted in the sciences, Carver blended art and practicality in a way I can only hope to partially attain. From this book, I humbly receive a new and invaluable hero, a new and awesome role model- Professor Carver, Jack of All Trades, Renaissance Man Extraordinaire- a true man of the people, a true Titan of Science.