Pear chance

“The pears are not seen / As the observer wills,” Wallace Stevens wrote, concluding his brief “Study of Two Pears” with a kind of surrender: Here was something whose gravity bends any strict business of objective description always toward sensuousness—something able to embody poise and rhapsody at once. No wonder the little fruit has such a following. It is forever ripe for contemplation by luminous minds (besides Stevens, see also Rene Magritte, above). And, on the last weekend of every July, when the Bartlett harvest has for 34 years occasioned a celebration in the little Delta town of Courtland, ripe for eating, too. Courtland’s pear fair runs from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Sunday, July 30, and includes live music, arts and crafts, a parade (complete with a queen’s coronation), a pear cook-off and a pear-pie-eating contest. It’s your turn to surrender. Call (916) 775-2000 or visit www.pearfair.com for more information.