The Best American Poetry

"Half of an Epic Simile not found in Hesiod" [by A. E. Stallings]

As at the winter solstice, when a faded blonde
On the brink of middle age, goes to the salon
To brighten up her outlook and her spirits
(Warm water on her scalp, the rich shampoo
That breathes of almond-blossoms), to submit
To another’s expert disinterested caresses,
While outside the plate-glass window, people push
Against the dwindling year, and lean into
The wind, their foreheads pinched with doubt and debt,
And it’s afternoon, but night comes chattering down
Like the shutters of a shop in a recession,
And all she asks for is a color adjustment,
For rays of honey to eclipse the grey,
And for the light to lengthen just a little.

The poem is from A. E. Stallings's justly celebrated book of poems Like (Farrar Straus & Giroux; paperback 2019).

The Best American Poetry 2020: Guest Editor Paisley Rekdal, Series Editor David Lehman

The 2020 edition of contemporary American poetry returns, guest edited by Paisley Rekdal, the award-winning poet and author of Nightingale, proving that this is “a ‘best’ anthology that really lives up to its title” (Chicago Tribune).

Since 1988, The Best American Poetry anthology series has been “one of the mainstays of the poetry publication world” (Academy of American Poets). Each volume in the series presents some of the year’s most remarkable poems and poets. The 2020 edition is guest edited by Utah’s Poet Laureate Paisely Rekdal, “a poet of observation and history...[who] revels in detail but writes vast, moral poems that help us live in a world of contraries” according to the Los Angeles Times. In The Best American Poetry 2020, she has selected a fascinating array of work that speaks eloquently to the “contraries” of our present moment in time.

The Best American Poetry 2020 is available for pre-order here.

--sdl

Robert Hershon: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Chatter

I did the Saturday puzzle on Sunday and

the Sunday puzzle on Saturday and I

watched a thousand hours of cops and robbers

when my friend assigned me the task of writing

a baseball poem, since right now there is no

baseball except in memory so I thought of

the Miracle Mets and then the Boys of Summer

but they both seemed frayed from overuse and I

began to think of the teams of my boyhood, call them

the Boys of Early Spring—Eddie Stanky and Pete Reiser

and Cookie Lavagetto,  Kirby Higbe and Ed Head and that perfect

baseball name, Dixie Walker, brother to Harry the Hat Walker,

and remembered more as a bigot who wouldn’t play with Jackie Robinson

than as an outfielder, but I didn’t know that when I was

ten and we had the only television set at 946 Bushwick Avenue

and  I watched the games by  myself with a bag of candy corn

the cheapest loose candy Woolworth’s sold, assuming

the Dodgers and I would grow old together (twelve, fourteen, beyond)

and wondering why all baseball announcers had Southern accents

and now the rich players and the even richer owners have finally

decided to play some baseball and I guess I’ll slump down and

stare at the games, by myself again, without candy corn

but maybe with a sip or two of Scotch

 

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Robert Hershon has written 15 books of poems, most recently End of the Business Day and Freeze Frame. He's won two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships and three from the New York Foundation for the Arts.  Hershon has been co-editor of Hanging Loose Press since its founding in 1966. [Ed. note: Bob Hershon passed away on March 20, 2021. See the Tribute Page for more information on Bob's life and work.]

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Woody Allen, "Apropros of Nothing": "I'm eighty-four; my life is almost half over.. ."

Woody Allen's autobiography, Apropros of Nothing, is full of pithy bon mots, good humor, and unfailing generosity toward the actors and other professionals he has worked with.

His self-deprecating humor is natural to him, a gift that yields spontaneous one-liners on every other page.

His tips on courtship are valuable. A brilliant French meal prepared by the suitor (blanquette de veau with clafoutis for dessert) works so well that it is "an express ride to the boudoir to work off some of the calories in the sack." 

Lots of juice, lots of dish, lots of inside baseball, and the personality of the genius rises to the occasion, 

His true ambition: "If I could trade my talent for any other person's, living or dead, who would it be? No contest - Bud Powell." 

"Nothing in the The Wasteland or Pound or Auden moves me as much as Cole Porter's 'You're not worth the ransom of asparagus out of season.'"

"I'm eighty-four; my life is almost half over. Not believing in a hereafter, I really can't see any practical difference if people remember me as a film director or an amateur clarinetist or at all. All that I ask is my ashes be scattered close to a pharmacy."

On posterity: "Rather than live on in the hearts and mind of the public, I prefer to live on in my apartment."

-- DL

Kent Johnson on Ashbery, BAP, and Poetry Re-education Camps

From “Because of Poetry” / by  John Bradley

A sort of review in Sulfur of the irrepressible Kent Johnson’s defiant new book of poems:
Because of Poetry I Have a Really Big House (Shearsman Books, $18.00) 

<<
“Say, isn’t that John Ashbery?” I asked.  “Over there, speaking with some young poet who’s trying to look like a young John Ashbery?” I told him, though I sounded just like the Kent Johnson in the “Matterhorn” poem who tells Fred Seidel that he sees John Ashbery.  “That’s ridiculous.  Everyone knows Ashbery is dead,” said Kent.  “And besides, why would the Poetry Institute put John Ashbery in a poetry re-education camp.  They love his poetry.”

More and more confused, I turned again to a poem to help me right my balance.   “’Could someone tell me why I’ve never been / selected for the yearly Best American Poetry?’” I read from “Could Someone Tell Me Why.”  Is it a crime, I wondered, to write such a thing in a poem?  I must have said this aloud, as Kent told me that he would be released from the re-education camp as soon as he wrote a poem that was chosen for Best American Poetry.  I wasn’t sure if he was joking or serious, and I nervously laughed.  “But that means you’ll be here forever!” I said, to cheer him up.  I could hear John Ashbery laughing nearby.
>>>

For the rest of the piece, click here.

from "Grand & Ogden Auto Parts" [by Mitch Sisskind]

Norby

I got Norby in my office, I said, 'Norby,

'I have an idea, you go out to California

'For three or four months, whatever,

'Six months, go out to California and

'We'll stay in touch, we'll be in touch

'While you're in California, but go out

'To California for some period of time,

'That's what I would urge you to do,

'I would urge you to go out to California

'For a while, three months, six months,

'Go out to California is what I'm saying,

'Get on a plane and go out to California,

'Go to California for five or six months,

'Or don't put a time limit on it. Okay?'

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Door Is Always Open

If you’re in the used car parts business

For any length of time you’ll start seeing

How this person is like a used fan clutch

Or that person is like a used water pump

Because of how they look and also how

They fit Into the overall system of things.

A water pump delivers coolant to the

Engine and then back to the radiator

And then back to the engine again

So the cycle keeps going around

To provide coolant to the engine

Or else the engine will overheat.

If a person started to overheat

At my place of business Tony Drago

Cooled them down like a water pump

Which he always looked like anyway

And when he started getting older

He looked like a used water pump.

 

It was the same with how Katsulos

When he started getting older

Looked like a used fan clutch and

How he and Tony Drago were like

The cooling system that you need

In the used car parts business.

 

But here is what else I’ve learned:

In the used car parts business don't

Let used car parts take over until

Used car parts are the only things

You think about. Because the door

Is always open and so is the road.

The Packard Eucalyptus

 

Ha! The Packard Eucalyptus! Just like

Walter Chrysler had the Chrysler Ozymandias,

Just like Ransom Olds wasted all his money

On the Oldsmobile Harbinger and just like

Roy Chapin could not quit tinkering with the

Hudson Gubernatorial, that's exactly how

Jim Nance made a mess of things at Packard

During the 1950s with the V-12 Eucalyptus

Which never made it to production and could

Have been called the Packard White Elephant.

Someplace on the lot I have an axle assembly

From a Eucalyptus, a muffler from a Harbinger,

And a flywheel from a Hudson Gubernatorial

But where? Where are somebody else's dreams?

   

Two Dozen Reasons to Make Dinner [by Adrienne Su]

Twelve Ways Cooking Is Empowering:

1. When you look into the refrigerator at what used to elicit a wail of “there’s nothing to eat,” you see the makings of a frittata, pizza, or fried rice.
2. After making and eating the frittata, pizza, or fried rice, you can gloat about not having wasted the scraps in the refrigerator.
3. Scraps in the refrigerator start to look less like clutter and more like material for a creative project.
4. If you’re working on a creative project unlikely to generate income, such as a book of poems, you can turn humble ingredients into excellent food.
5. What’s in your food is under your control.
6. You can’t always control how a dish will turn out, but you can learn from disappointments.
7. Even with occasional disappointments, your house smells terrific and feels like a home.
8. After cooking, you’re forced to clean your house, or at least the kitchen, thus supporting another round of cooking.
9. You can directly support people who are sick, mourning, occupied with a new baby, protesting, or simply living their lives.
10. If you live in a place where restaurants don’t serve what you long for, you can still have many of the dishes you crave.
11. You have fewer cravings for sweets and snacks because you don’t feel, after a meal, that something is missing.
12. Fewer things are missing.

Twelve Usable Cookbooks:

1. America’s Test Kitchen, Bowls
2. Irene Kuo, The Key to Chinese Cooking
3. Florence Lin, Florence Lin’s Chinese Regional Cookbook
4. Deborah Madison, Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone
5. Peter Meehan et al, Lucky Peach Presents 100 Easy Asian Recipes
6. Urvashi Pitre, Indian Instant Pot Cookbook
7. Susan Purdy, The Family Baker
8. Julie Sahni, Classic Indian Cooking
9. Lorna Sass, Whole Grains Every Day, Every Way
10. Ellen Schrecker, Mrs. Chiang’s Szechwan Cookbook
11. Alice Waters, The Art of Simple Food
12. Online archives of Fine Cooking magazine (technically not a cookbook, but as trustworthy as #1-11)

(Ed note: This post first appeared on June 5, 2020)

Pictures from an Institution (The Columbia Review reunion of 2005)

from the reunion of Columbia Review editors and writers organized in spring 2005 by Les Gottesman: on top, left to right, John Hollander, Richard Howard, David Lehman; below, Rika Lesser (blurred), David Lehman, Paul Violi, and Bill Zavatsky. The venue: Bob Holman's Bowery Poetry Club.

The Two Kinds of Poets [by Adrienne Su]

I have an informal, untested theory that when it comes to sustenance while writing, there are two kinds of poets: coffee poets and food poets. Coffee poets (who in some cases could be considered tea poets) can go half the day or longer without solid food; their focus is sustainable without the distraction and mess of eating. Coffee poets who are also capable of writing in public spaces are doubly blessed, as they can log many hours in a cafe without having to incur the expense of meals with their beverages, or the interruption of leaving for lunch. Bringing a thermos, they can bide their time in libraries, getting lost in the books they’re reading and writing, enjoying a communal version of a solitary activity.

As a food poet, one whose energy levels are better maintained by six small meals a day versus three large, I envy coffee poets their long stretches of concentration. They aren’t constantly reminded by hunger of their profane, alimentary existence as human animals. When they write at home, their kitchen sinks don’t fill with dishes within the first three hours. Their keyboards don’t get sticky or greasy. They don’t end a day of writing only to realize that, bit by bit, they have eaten all of last night’s leftovers and there is nothing for dinner.

The inimitable Kazim Ali is a coffee poet: “Early morning is my writing time-- and coffee is the key to my experience. I buy beans from local roasters, preferably organic. My favorite is Mexican coffee, the darker the roast the better. I used to hand grind the beans (more for the meditation quality of doing the work, rather than any notion of coffee purity) but now I just have a little grinder for them. In the past I swore by the french press or a pour-over if I was only drinking a cup, but these days I make drip coffee in a coffee-maker because it’s easier to make a lot and keep it hot. If I don't drink it black, I'll drink it with stevia and almond or oat milk. Mahmoud Darwish (in that rapturous extended passage near the beginning of his memoir of the Beirut bombing of 1982) says ‘Coffee is the sister of time,’ and I believe it. I hover over sentences with that warm company.”

Kazim, who in addition to poetry has written memoir, criticism, novels, and translations, while also building a distinguished record of editing and teaching, is clearly driven by more than coffee. Yet knowing this detail about his process suggests that we food poets might do well to streamline the way we work, to be more like coffee poets, only with food. We can’t cut food-preparation time down to that of brewing coffee, but we can aspire to limit it on certain days.

Generally, when cooking, I find that I have to be all in, mindfully trimming fat, fishing out lemon seeds with a tiny measuring spoon, intuiting the springiness of dough. Otherwise, I cut or burn myself, or over- or undercook things. Most “quick and easy” recipes don’t work for me; they spur an inattention that ends in disappointment. Yet on the rare occasion that I find myself free to write for a day or the better part of a day, I don’t want to dwell in cooking. I also don’t want to resort to a giant pot of stew that has to be eaten so many times that you never want to see it again, the way dogs resign themselves to their kibble after begging for what you’re having.

Here are a few ways to hang back from the kingdom of cooking while trying to sidestep taste fatigue:

* Embrace the powers of the microwave, which generates less dishwashing than conventional cooking and in summer keeps the kitchen cool. I’ve been making the Szechuan Green Beans in Barbara Kafka’s Microwave Gourmet for decades; it cooks in the dish it’s served in. (Barbara Kafka started out as a poet.) Marie T. Smith’s memorably titled Microwave Cooking for One helped me finish my last book; the chili and the fish chowder are as simple and good as promised, and the recipes multiply for when you’re not isolating. Julie Sahni’s Moghul Microwave contains miracles, too, among them Parsi Chicken and Savory Keema Cake.

* Cook extra of whatever you’re making the day before, but make sure it includes two or more of these elements: spicy, sour, bitter, fermented, or contrasting textures. Having to eat the same dish over and over is more tolerable when it has complexity; it takes me a long time to tire of Chinese spicy noodles, in vegetarian or carnivorous versions, hot or cold, inflected with some or all of these: sesame paste, peanut butter, black vinegar, chili oil, a touch of sweetness.

* Cook extra dinner before your writing day, but with specific plans to transform the leftovers into something different. Two books that can help with this are Leftovers by Kathy Gunst and Green Plate Special by Christine Rudalevige.

* Do what my parents did when raising teenagers and working: order rice-based takeout meals, then extend them with your own rice and vegetables, keeping the vegetables easy: sliced Napa cabbage simmered in chicken broth, stir-fried broccoli or asparagus.

* Team up with a local “food poet” friend whose eating preferences are compatible with yours, even if lockdown forbids eating together. Each of you cooks a dish, then gives half to the other.

Chances are, you will still spend more time in the kitchen than a coffee poet will. But channel Kazim’s observation about the “meditation quality of doing the work,” and adapt the wisdom of Mahmoud Darwish to your own temperament. Spicy noodles, too, can be the sister of time.

(Ed note: This post first appeared on June 4, 2020

Grief Canning [by Barbara Hamby]

(Ed note: This post first appeared on this date in 2016 and it became the most popular post of the year, read and shared widely. It seems fitting to bring it back this year, when many might be adding canning to their summer of Covid activities. sdl)

Tomatoes, before and after (photos (c) Barbara Hamby)

Four months before my mother died, I was visiting her in Honolulu. She had quit cooking, and I worried about her getting enough vegetables in her diet. I usually spent the first few days of a visit making vats of soup and pouring the soups in individual containers for the deep freezer she had in her condo. I have a wonderful vegetarian minestrone recipe I'd started making as an undergraduate and developed over the years. I had also started making my own tomato sauce every August, and I'd brought jars to add to my mother's soup. She picked up a jar and asked what I was doing. I explained that I had made the sauce myself over two days the previous August. I ordered a box of forty tomatoes from my local organic market, and spent the first day peeling and preparing the pulp. The next day I made the sauce with basil, garlic, onions, and olive oil and canned it using a water bath.
           My mother shuddered. She had grown up on a farm, and she hated everything about farm life. She couldn't wait to go away to college and then live in a city. She had worked for seven years in Washington, D.C. before she met my father and then followed him on his career in the Air Force, first to New Orleans (where I was born) and then to Washington, France, and finally to Honolulu, a city she loved above all the others she had visited. She had left the farm far behind, but she was horrified to see her daughter embrace an activity that had marred her summers as a girl.
            I didn't really think much about it. So much I had done had horrified her that I was pretty used to this reaction. She was a life-long Republican and Baptist, so we didn't talk about politics or religion. She knew I was a Democrat, which was bad enough, but if she had known how far I had strayed from her Billy Graham take on the world, she would have been truly horrified. If I could have described my beliefs, I think I would have called myself an Epicurean, because I love thinking that we are made of the same matter that makes the stars. Also, I loved Epicurus saying that there was a soul but that it died with the body.
            On the way to all this, I had passed through a Buddhist phase, and it was these years of meditation that helped me forge a beautiful relationship with my mother during the last 25 years of her life. She loved to fight, and I refused to do it. My brother would fight with her about politics, and I would ask him how successful he thought he would be in changing a 60-year-old woman's mind, and then a 70-year-old woman's mind, and finally an 85-year-old woman's mind. But they continued to argue, and they both seemed to enjoy it.
          

My mother, shortly before she died.

  I think we thought that my mother would live well into her 90s, because she was so vital. When she died suddenly at 86, it was a shock. After the funeral my siblings and I cleaned out her condo, and I went back home to Tallahassee, and spent the next year writing, settling her estate, and making jam.
            My mother had a great death. She was getting ready to go to work, and she lay down for a moment and had a stroke. She was still working, still driving, sharp as ever, still beautiful. We all want to go this way, but it was hard on those left behind. It was especially hard on my brother--he was her favorite because he made her laugh--but we all felt it. I thought I had asked her everything, but every day I have questions about her past and mine. My history book is gone. She never wrote anything down, and she wasn't a storyteller. Every piece of information had to be pried out of her.
            This was the year I received a Guggenheim fellowship, so I was working on my project, but after the time at my desk, there were hours that loomed. I could have started drinking, but it just feels so bad the next day. What I really fell into was canning.
            My mother died in August, so once the fall came around, I was back home and it was citrus season, marmalade time. I found a great book, The Blue Chair Canning Book by Rachel Saunders, and I made orange, grapefruit, lemon, kumquat, and clementine marmalades. Chilean cherries came into the market, and I made cherry jalapeno jam, cherries in red wine sauce (gorgeous decorating a coconut cake), brandied cherries, which Saunders calls Christmas in a jar. I made plum cardamom jam, strawberry chamomile jam. Like a witch, I set up my cauldrons on the stove. I had a giant copper pot that my mother-in-law, Josie Kirby, had used to make jams for years in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and I was giving it another workout.
  

Figs becoming jam in Josie Kirby's copper pot. (photo(c) Barbara Hamby)

          I'd go to the market a couple of times a week, and scout the fruits. I made friends with the produce guys. When I had my fruit, I'd put half-pint or pint jars in the dishwasher to sterilize them. Then I'd fill my huge immersion pot with water and turn it on. After the first few batches, you set up a rhythm. While the jars are being scalded and the immersion cauldron is heating up, I put the fruit in Josie's copper pot, and poured in the sugar, lemon juice and sometimes pectin, depending on the pH of the fruit.
            I've learned a lot about pH, because I don't want to kill anyone. And I give a lot of jam away, because there's no way I could eat as much as I make. It's a sweaty business, one that requires concentration and constant stirring. You can't think about all the questions you didn't ask your mother, how she will never excoriate you again and how you'll miss that. No one will ask you about your eternal soul, which I don't think for a minute is eternal. But while I'm stirring a vat of macerated figs or white peaches and saffron or a mix peaches and blackberries, I feel a deep connection with something. Who knows what? Maybe part of the pleasure is lining up the labeled jars in my pantry, which is like lining up poems for a book or the memories of someone who loved you more than she understood you, as if understanding matters.

Favorite canning books:

The Blue Chair Jam Cookbook by Rachel Saunders
Gourmet Preserves by Madelaine Bullwinkel
Mes Confitures by Christine Ferber
Well-Preserved by Eugenia Bone (her recipe for cherries in wine is worth the price of the whole book)
The River Cottage Preserves Handbook by Pam Corbin
Canning for a New Generation by Liana Krissoff
Preserving the Taste by Edon Waycott

Barbara Hamby is the author of several volumes of poetry, most recently On the Street of Divine Love: New and Selected Poems (Pitt Poetry Series). Her new book of poems, Holoholo is forthcoming in Spring, 2021. She teaches creative writing in the English Department at Florida State University. Find out more about Barbara at her website here.

 

Today is National Dog Day: "Good Dogs" by Charles Baudelaire

5th Ave & 9th St., October 22, 2014 (photo by Stacey Lehman)

Away with the academic muse! I have no business with that old prude. I invoke the familiar muse, the citizen, the boon companion, to aid me to sing to the good dogs, the poor dogs, the dirty dogs, those whom every one drives away, pestiferous and lousy, except the poor, whose associates they are, and the poet, who sees them with fraternal eye.

Fie upon the foppish dog, upon the coxcomb quadruped, Dane, King Charles, pugdog or lapdog, so enamoured of himself that he darts inconsiderately between the legs or on the knees of the visitor, as if he were certain of pleasing, wild as a youngster, foolish as a flirt, often surly and insolent as a servant! Fie especially upon those four-pawed serpents, idle and shivering, that are called greyhounds, and that do not harbor in their pointed muzzle enough scent to follow the track of a friend, nor in their flattened head enough intelligence to play at dominoes!

To the kennel with all these plaguey parasites!

Let them slink to the kennel stuffed and sulky! I sing the dirty dog, the poor dog, the homeless dog, the stroller dog, the dog buffoon, the dog whose instinct, like that of the poor, the gypsy and the mountebank, is marvelously sharpened by necessity, that excellent mother, that true patron of intelligence !

I sing the distressful dogs, be they those that wander, alone, in the winding gullies of the great cities or those who have said to the forsaken man, with blinking spiritual eyes: "Take me with you, and of two miseries we shall make a sort of joy!"

"Whither go the dogs?" Nestor Roquepelan once said in an immortal leaflet which he has doubtless forgotten, and which I alone, and perhaps Saint-Beuve, recall today.

Where do the dogs go, you ask, heedless men? They go about their business.

Business engagements, affairs of love. Through the fog, through the snow, through the mire, under the biting dogstar, under the streaming rain, they come, they go, they hurry, they move along under carriages, excited by fleas, by passion, by duty or by need. Like us, they have risen bright and early, and they seek their livelihood or run to their pleasure.

There are some who sleep in a ruin in the suburbs and who come every day at a stated hour, to beg alms at the door of a Palais-Royal cook; others who run in troops, for more than five leagues, to partake of the repast which has been prepared for them through the charity of certain sexagenarian maids, whose unoccupied hearts are given over to beasts, since imbecile man wants them no more; others who,. . ., frantic with love, leave their province on certain days, to come to the city and romp for an hour with a handsome bitch, a little careless in her toilet, but proud and thankful. 

(excerpt from Good Dogs by Charles Baudelaire, tr. Joseph T. Shipley)

David Lehman and Johnny, February 2020. Photo © Stacey Lehman

Everything in Its Place [by Adrienne Su]

Poet and memoirist Sandra Beasley cooks differently depending on whether she’s writing poetry or prose: “I’m a tremendous fan of mise en place; one of my favorite wedding gifts was a stack of glass nesting bowls that I use. I’m methodical which, to be honest, is something that I pride myself on as a poet as well… For prose, I’m a mess—indulgent snacking, weird sleep and meal hours, hoping my husband does most of the cooking! I get overwhelmed with the scale of prose projects. I cook better as a poet.”

I can’t help but connect this to Sandra’s facility with forms. Writing a sonnet or sestina is an overt act of ordering raw material, taking the chaos of human existence and working it into a recognizable shape, with strict rules governing what can appear at the end of each line, how many lines there will be, and sometimes how many stresses each line should contain. Many good formal poems break some of the rules, within the bounds of what I call, in the classroom, not looking like a mistake. One could argue that free-verse poems do the same - give shape to the shapelessness of experience - and the best free verse does exactly that. But something about mise en place mirrors the compulsive neatness of rhymed quatrains, the symmetry of a pantoum returning to its first and third lines as it completes its mission of saying every line twice, without ever quite repeating itself.

Here is a curry in progress, in Sandra’s kitchen:

A fellow devotee of forms, I’ve made similar efforts to create order in the kitchen. I share Sandra’s enthusiasm for mise en place, which is essential for the speed of Chinese cooking (the actual cooking, not the prep, being speedy). I also do - or did, pre-Covid - methodical lunch preparation. Ideally, I’d start the work week with four of something like this in the fridge (not five because some weeks included a lunch out or at home):

This was a makeshift sardine banh mi - the carrots and radishes quick-pickled, the baguette not pictured; that’s mayo in the sauce container - and a side of fruit. Other favorites include calamari and white bean salad, with mesclun or farro in the other compartment, or a bowl. It isn’t quick, but making four at once cuts down the time spent per lunch. Seeing the containers stacked in the fridge erases a daily problem from the week and pre-empts the junky snacking that follows a hastily purchased, not-really-what-you-wanted sandwich. Most of all, thinking about lunch is over until the weekend.

Some advance-lunch guidelines: Once you have your stash, don’t give in to the temptation to eat one for dinner midweek; not only will you lose a day, you’ll also get tired of it. Don’t repeat a lunch for two consecutive weeks; you’ll get tired of it. Sauce or dressing should travel in its own container, to be mixed just before you eat. If the lunch involves good bread, slice and freeze the bread for the week, thawing what you need for the next day overnight, or let it thaw in your lunch bag during the morning. Some ingredients have to be added the day you eat, such as avocado; use a reminder app to carry the mental load of remembering to add them. Keep salt and pepper at work. If you have the space where you work and it’s allowed, having a small toaster oven there can be life-changing.

It’s hard to fend off the notion that poetry writing is an irrational, struck-by-lightning activity that doesn’t respond to ongoing effort. For sure, there are days when it seems to resist. But writing of any kind works better when you keep trying, and it’s less intimidating if you view writing as a form of organizing. Sandra reports about her photo: “I use that cooking time for planning writing projects; in this case, I was working toward delivering a commissioned poem on deadline.” I find this reassuring evidence that poems are made, not granted by deities. And on those days when kitchen organization seems impossible and you keep reaching for the chips, maybe that’s a good time to muck around in a larger, more sprawling project, dare I say prose?

(Ed note: This post first appeared on June 3, 2020)

Lenny's "Divertimento" [by David Lehman]

So you've never heart it before, / or even heard it,  / you're driving on Highland Road when it starts, / and instead of driving up East Remington and home, / you drive down Highland / until it intersects with Hanshaw, / then double back, and drive up the Parkway / and back down and then over to Berkshire / and then to Cayuga Heights Road / and finally Sunset Park, / but you don't stop, you continue driving, / so you can hear the whole thing /all eighteen minutes forty eight seconds of it, / the end enthralling, the music outlasting the applause / with thanks to Lauren Rico for playing it / on "Symphony Hall" (Sirius 76) / Bernstein's Divertimento for Orchestra / composed in 1980, and said to be / based on two notes, B (for Boston) and C (for Centennial).  -- DL

Happy birthday, Lenny (August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) 

Quote of the Day: Sylvia Plath

"August rain: the best of the summer gone, and the new fall not yet born. The odd uneven time."

            — Sylvia Plath The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, August, 1952

Leonard Bernstein (August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) conducts the overture to "Candide"

Without Restaurants [by Adrienne Su]

Poet Faith Shearin reports from sheltering-in-place in Massachusetts: “We are cooking a ton because even the carry out in Amherst and Northampton has shut down. I miss restaurants more than I can say. I love a lot of food I don't know how to cook: Indian, Thai, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese… Our Covid diet consists largely of the things I was raised on. Several generations of my ancestors drank iced tea and fried chicken in eastern North Carolina; I made my first batch of cornbread with my great grandmother before I learned to read. My great grandparents were farmers and corn was their most prolific crop. I was served grits with one soppy egg for breakfast, and cornbread with most soups; both sides of my family were devoted to Brunswick Stew. Nobody could completely agree about the ingredients in this dish so a lot was left to interpretation and imagination. I like to pull the chicken off a freshly cooked bird, dice some onions and garlic, chop basil, then add corn, red potatoes, and lima beans to a broth that is half tomato sauce half chicken broth. One grandmother liked to add green beans; another favored several meats, including pork. Some folks make it thin, with tomato juice, and some make it thicker with tomato paste. I make cornbread like this: 2 and 1/2 cups of coarse ground cornmeal, 1/2 teaspoon baking soda, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1 egg, 1 and 1/3 cup buttermilk, 2 tablespoons of butter. Cook at 375 for 25 minutes. I sometimes serve the stew with a spinach salad or make a fruit cobbler to go with it, or I throw a sweet potato in the oven and serve it with a little bit of butter and brown sugar. I like to cook when I am in the mood and rapidly tire of it when I'm doing it three times a day. I know a lot of people feel like this. The food I can cook well is the food I learned to make from my grandparents; it tastes like childhood.”

Faith and I are old friends. We both call the American South home - Kitty Hawk, NC for Faith, Atlanta, GA for me - but both live now in places where cornbread and Brunswick stew are more novelties than staples. Although my family arrived in the South much later than Faith’s did and our fried chicken was more likely to come from a restaurant than a cast-iron skillet on the stove, I share her connection to fruit cobbler and grits, and felt the estrangement when I first moved North. My Thanksgiving stuffing is cornbread-based. Like Faith, I cherish Indian, Chinese, Thai, Japanese, and Vietnamese restaurants. My grandmothers cooked Chinese food, but I didn’t grow up cooking with my grandmothers, as the link had been broken by World War II and the Chinese Communist revolution; I never met my paternal grandmother. My mother, driven with her family from their home in Shanghai when she was a child, had to teach herself how to cook Chinese food in 1960s Atlanta, which meant the ingredients were Southern-inflected, the techniques explained in English by Joyce Chen and Grace Zia Chu. But because she knew how the dishes were supposed to look and taste, my mother was well-prepared to use (and adapt) the instructions. By the mid-1980s, Atlanta’s Chinese restaurants had multiplied approximately one hundredfold since my father’s arrival in 1948; many catered to a Chinese clientele. Our lives had reached the point where time was scarcer than money, so we often lived on good-quality takeout plus home-cooked rice and vegetables.

Faith’s lockdown-narrowed diet reminds me that the foods we associate with comfort and home are not necessarily made in the home. Restaurants build meaningful family memory, too. Without restaurants, her longing for, say, tofu with bok choy is no less a part of who she is than her skill in turning out a Brunswick stew; it only joined the family later. This spell of eating what we can is an opportunity to expand self-knowledge. What do we miss the most, and what is different about us without it? What skills from previous generations - even if we have to imagine them, as I imagine Faith’s great grandparents in a bad year for corn, or each of my parents as a foreign student in Georgia, faced with the mystery of buttermilk or white gravy - are we calling on now? What do we know how to cook that, out of forgetfulness or the excitement of the new, we haven’t cooked in a decade and are bringing back because the pantry, or a pandemic-driven sense of continuity with lost forebears, points to it? It’s worth recording, occasionally if not regularly, what we’re eating these days, as well as what we aren’t. One day we’ll be able to look at the list, understand what it reveals, and possibly even write again, with new perspective on who we’ve become.

(Ed note: This post first appeared on June 2, 2020)

The Pauses between Poems [by Adrienne Su]

Most of the poets I know have been temporarily silenced, at least in verse, by the Covid-19 crisis. Recent months recall the aftermaths of 9/11 and the 2016 presidential election: impossible to write creatively about, impossible to turn away from. To seek the distance needed to transform experience into reflection feels like closing your eyes at the wheel. To wander into gray areas, so that a poem might begin in one place and end in another, requires a surrounding prevalence of non-gray areas. Now everything is gray, and wandering hazardous.

Was it really only a short time ago that the average poet was maneuvering to maximize writing time, stealing half an hour before a work meeting, setting alarms fifteen, then twenty minutes earlier than normal, or making notes in a parked car or real-life waiting room? As recently as February, as if poem-making conditions were normal, I was identifying strategies for increasing writing time by reducing time spent planning, shopping for, and preparing meals, without giving in to joyless repetition, frozen dinners, or excess takeout.

I’m more of an authority on the latter (not giving in) than the former (kitchen shortcuts), although I’m interested in both. Even before the rituals of eating became central to life under lockdown, I saw every meal as a chance to celebrate being alive and able to savor breakfast, lunch, dinner, or one of the many semi-meals I sneak in between. It’s a near-obsession. Despite repeated culling and frequent visits to the library, I have nearly 300 cookbooks, in addition to several shelves of food nonfiction. Over the years, including many spent parenting alone, I’ve assembled an army of appliances meant to save time - pressure cooker, stand mixer, food processor, programmable rice cooker, immersion blender, Vitamix - but also a number of things that aren’t about saving time: canning supplies, ice-cream maker, pizza stone, cake-decorating tools, and an admittedly neglected manual pasta machine. When there’s room for it, cooking is a pleasure and the closest thing I have to a hobby. Yet I find (or, pre-pandemic, found) myself constantly chafing at having to choose between writing and cooking, and resenting cooking for so being relentlessly non-optional.

Before the novel coronavirus upended routines, I often got up early Sunday, intending to go to the grocery store while everyone else was either at church (this is rural Pennsylvania) or lingering over waffles. I’d list what ingredients needed to be used up, then deploy an Eat Your Books search to create a week’s worth of menus that called for them, thus generating a second list, of what to buy. But I tend to page through cookbooks as if they were restaurant menus: “I’ll have the pesto-grilled salmon, please, with butternut-squash risotto and a side of broccoli rabe, probably followed by peach cobbler with vanilla ice cream,” with the intention, the next day, of switching to Chinese food. The list would grow complicated, requiring stops at multiple stores. By the time I actually reached the first store, it was crowded, and by the time I finished shopping, it was mid-afternoon. If I wanted to make lunches to take to work that week and dinner for that night, I’d have to start cooking right away. What happened to my plan to shop early, then have a little bit of Sunday to write?

Somehow, over time, though, the writing got done. That most of it has recently been about food seems relevant, but domestic chores can be the enemy of writing about anything, including domestic chores. I’ve unwittingly cut other things out - I’ve missed out on most movies, for instance - but, stepping back now, realize that I’m not completely inefficient in the kitchen. Over time I’ve developed a few ways to nourish a day of writing, on the occasion that such a rare day can be found, without too much compromise on taste. This week I’ll talk about some of these ways, with input from a few other poets on sustenance and writing (or sustenance and lockdown).

In the meantime, I say to any poet who can’t write poems these days, I’m with you. I can’t, either, especially as each day’s bad news keeps multiplying in scale and range. But not writing poems isn’t bothering me yet. From a writing point of view, I’ve found the Covid-19 crisis to be, in addition to a mass tragedy and magnification of inequality, a reminder that silences are nothing new. I didn’t write in the immediate aftermath of childbirth, or in the time around any move, or while starting my teaching career. I’ve even had days of silence in an artists’ colony, which in pragmatic terms is a waste but in creative terms, natural. Writing is a conversation. Sometimes you talk, other times you listen, and what you eventually say is more meaningful for your having listened. The entity you’re conversing with might not care what you think - it may even want to do you mortal harm - but by listening to it (while doing everything you can to avoid infection by it), you are developing a response. Like the vaccine we’re all waiting for, that response could take a long time. Pandemic-prompted non-writing can be a form of writing. By paying attention, we shape the white space around our lines and stanzas. That white space is not the absence of poem but a defining element of a poem’s structure. In the meantime, whether or not we’re able to compose a line, we have to eat.

A Bright Green Side of Broccoli Rabe

1 bunch broccoli rabe, about 1 lb.
1 Tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
2 cloves garlic, peeled and coarsely chopped
Salt
1/4 tsp. crushed red pepper flakes or a seasoning blend such as Penzeys Tuscan Sunset, Florida Seasoned Pepper, or Lemon Pepper

1. Put a large pot of water on to boil, as if you were cooking pasta, over high heat. (If you are cooking pasta, reserve the hot water for it in step 3.)
2. While the water heats, rinse the broccoli rabe, then cut the small stems and florets into 2-inch lengths. Using a paring knife, peel the outer layer of skin from the thick stems, then cut them into 1-inch lengths. As you cut, collect the thick stems in one bowl, the leafy florets and small stems together in another.
3. When the water comes to a boil, add a tablespoon or so of salt (adding it gradually, as dumping it in can cause the water to bubble up further). Then add the thicker stems of the broccoli rabe. A minute later, add the florets and small stems. Stir briefly, let the water return to a boil, then drain the rabe and spray with cold water to arrest its vibrant color. Drain well. At this point, you can set it aside until close to serving time, even refrigerate it overnight.
4. Shortly before you’re ready to eat, heat the olive oil in a wide saucepan (12” is nice) over medium heat. Add the garlic and stir until it’s fragrant but not browned, a few seconds. Add the drained broccoli rabe, stir to coat with the garlicky oil, and season with red pepper flakes or seasoning blend and salt to taste. Toss and stir until heated through, a couple of minutes, adding an extra minute or so if the greens were refrigerated.

About 4 servings, 2 if you love bitter greens.

(Ed note: This post first appeared on June 1, 2020)

Adrienne Su, Guest Author August 24-28

photo © Guy Freeman

This week we welcome back Adrienne Su as our guest author. Adrienne is Professor of Creative Writing and Poet-in-Residence at Dickinson College, in Pennsylvania. Her fifth collection of poems, Peach State, which focuses on Chinese-American food and her native Atlanta, is forthcoming from Pitt in spring 2021. Her previous books are Living Quarters (Manic D Press), Having None of It (Manic D), Sanctuary (Manic D), and Middle Kingdom (Alice James Books). Poems and prose can be found at adriennesu.ink.

Welcome, Adrienne.

 

-- sdl

The French and the British Vie for the Yankee Dollar

Who said it:

<<<
The French try to deal with us by making us feel foolish, to prove to us that we didn’t have the brain power to follow them; the British dealt with us by making us feel guilty that we had let them down. 
>>

a) Julia Louis-Dreyfus
b) Art Buchwald
c) Henry Kissinger
d) Walter Lippmann
e) Walter Neff

Hint: “There were differences at the beginning of the relationship," he said about himself and Marilyn, or Byron and Castlereagh, or the US and China, or the Dodgers and Yankees. "Nevertheless, we’ve learned to live with each other for many decades." Red herrings: “There is still a tiny Seventh-day Adventist inside of me screaming to get out every time I make a pass at a tuna fish sandwich.”"When all men think alike, no one thinks very much."  "Elaine is just in pain." "How could I know that murder can sometimes smell like honeysuckle?" 

 

Sarah Clancy: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

photo by Turlach O'Broin

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Ringing in Sick to Go Mermaid Hunting

 

Once when I wasn’t I called in sick for the evening shift

and went instead to meet you at Raftery’s in Kilcolgan,

we left your car there and I drove south-west down

the summer solstice evening, hitting for the coast.

We squinted through sunglasses at Ballinderreen and Kinvara

but didn’t stop, turned for Fanore at Ballyvaughan, you leaning back,

feet on the dash singing along to the Indigo Girls and Johnny Cash,

asking me where we were headed. But messing about,

I wouldn’t say, I told you: On a day like this, trust me,

it will all work out. We’re going mermaid hunting

and the signs are good for catching.

 

There were no mermaids though, at the pier before Black Head

just one dolphin doing her bit for inter-special integration,

she came in waist-deep to meet us and we were charmed,

and drenched. From behind wet hair you asked me how

I’d known and in my stupid humour I said: Oh you know,

I had my people call hers – that’s how it goes and of course

you pushed me backwards off the pier then jumped

yourself and our dolphin circled as if she got the joke,

spearing herself four feet skywards above our heads,

then vanishing beneath. Us two fools, we swam through seaweed,

feeling elemental. You’re half fish, you said,

and I said yea but I’ve caught you this time.

 

In Lenanne’s at dusk we had chowder and a pint

I sat with salty skin and hair and when you joined

the jobsworth band to sing ‘The Dimming of the Day’ for me,

you made every hair on every sunburned neck there stand.

You slept then as I drove back but I woke you in Kilcolgan

to send you down the Craughwell road–Me? I hit for home

but parked at Whitestrand Beach, the longest evening

of the year, too full of everything to go inside just then.

 

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Sarah Clancy is from Galway City, Ireland, although she now lives in county Clare. She is the author of three collections of poetry, including The Truth and Other Stories (Salmon Poetry, 2014), Stacey and the Mechanical Bull (Lapwing Press, Belfast, 2011), and Thanks for Nothing, Hippies (Salmon Poetry, 2012).  She has been placed or shortlisted in several of Ireland’s well-known poetry competitions. Sarah has won the Cuirt International Festival of Literature Grand Slam Championship and was runner-up in the All-Ireland Grand Slam Championships. In 2015 she was named The Bogman's Cannon People's Poet and in 2016 she was the Lingo Festival's Poet Laureate. Her work is widely anthologized and has been published in translation in Mexico, Slovenia, Poland, Italy, and Spain, as well as in the UK, Canada, and the US in English.

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