The Best American Poetry

What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Stronger [by Michael Fontaine]

That's Diogenes up above, the Greek philosopher who famously lived in a wine barrel.

This post is #4 in the series on How to Drink. Click here for parts one, two, and three. Fair warning: this one's longer, so pour a glass of wine, fire up the music, and get a little stronger. 

 

Nietzsche said it first, but Kelly Clarkson said it better:

“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”

She's right, and if you don't believe it, then lifting heavy or running a couple dozen sprints will remind you. (I’ll come back to that topic tomorrow.)

In the meantime, Clarkson goes a long way toward answering an ancient question, namely, where do good ideas come from?

As you'll see below, Vincent Obsopoeus is the first person in world history to write a How-to manual for drinking alcohol.

Strange as it now seems, nobody had ever thought to do that before. How did he come up with the idea?

Start with Hollywood. In 2006 a dark comedy came out called Smokin' Aces. It’s a terrible movie but it features a brilliant performance by Jeremy Piven.

Piven plays a Las Vegas card illusionist who gets tangled up with the mob, and in every scene -- no matter what’s happening, even when he's getting beaten up  -- he keeps fiddling with his playing cards and pulling tricks. Those cards are an obsession, a part of him. “They're kind of like worry beads for the character that I kind of incorporated,” said Piven at the time.

That's exactly the kind of guy Obsopoeus was, only with wine instead of cards. 

When an influential man once offered to help Obsopoeus get a prestigious job, he replied that the advertised salary was so low, “it won’t even quench my thirst.”

And when Obsopoeus asked Joachim Camerarius to blurb The Art of Drinking, Camerarius replied,

If you publish this book, you won’t easily convince everyone of your sobriety (as you claim). ... People assume speech tracks one’s true feelings.

In other words, thought Camerarius, everyone would assume Obsopoeus was an alcoholic because he wrote a poem in praise of drinking wine. It's inevitable. 

Events proved Camerarius right. A couple years later, Obsopoeus wrote another book and in it, he tucked away a tiny comment about drinking games:

I wrote a lot about that topic in The Art of Drinking, and I hear a lot of people are trashing me behind my back for publishing it. They say I went too far. Whatever. Obsopoeus doesn’t care. They can go on hating and criticizing me until they explode.

That sounds deeply bitter, and it is, but it's also totally hilarious. Why?

The tell is the phrase I translated here as "Whatever. Obsopoeus doesn't care."

In Latin it's Haec non sunt curae Obsopoeo et Hippoclidi, literally, "Obsopoeus and Hippoclides don't care."

In ancient Greece, Hippocleides was a young man who ruined his chance to marry a princess by getting drunk and acting stupid at a party. In his drunken state, he quipped, "Hippocleides doesn't care."

In time that response became the classic ancient Greek expression for "f#ck it."

And it shows that even at the very moment he was accused of drinking too much, Obsopoeus couldn't resist making a joke about drinking too much.

That brings me to the letter I’d like to share with you.

Because of space restrictions, I didn’t have room to include Obsopoeus' original preface in How to Drink. It’s a gem, though, and I’m pleased to publish it here online among fellow lovers of literature, instead of burying it in some specialist journal.

Even better, it’s now generously seeded with hyperlinks for the curious and indulgent to follow. It’s the first translation into any language, and it’s a fascinating insight into how and why Obsopoeus came to write his poem on The Art of Drinking – the very first, as he points out, that anyone had ever thought of.

Specifically, the preface reveals how great literature can spring from a combination of disappointment, resentment, a lot of wine, and a determination to prove all the bastards wrong.

In it we learn that Obsopoeus – a gifted translator – had recently lost out on some commissions to translate classical literature, apparently on the grounds that he wasn’t a serious enough person to handle great “works of art.” And that's why, he says, he turned his attention to the one “art” that everyone thought he was worthy of: the art of drinking.

It all goes to show that Kelly Clarkson was right. What didn’t kill Obsopoeus, made him stronger.

 

The Preface to The Art of Drinking

(For the original 1536 Latin text, click here. My translation is from the slightly slimmed down version he included in the 1537 reprint, here.)

 

To John Hartung,

the illustrious and humane gentleman, and

Judge of Heilsbronn Abbey,

Vincent Obsopoeus sends his warmest greetings

 

The people of Corinth were shocked at first and paralyzed with fear when the news dropped that a hostile army, led by King Philip of Macedon, was about to invade their city.

Then, though, they all kicked into high gear, competing to make all necessary preparations to defend their homeland. One started furbishing weapons, another was gathering stones, a third was patching the city walls and fixing portions that had collapsed or that were weak with age; yet another was erecting towers and battlements. In short, everyone everywhere was working their tails off to do whatever the situation demanded.

Diogenes the Cynic saw all this energy in action. And, since he didn’t have anything to do (nobody was asking him for help!), he hitched up his tunic and started frantically rolling his dolium—the wine “barrel” he lived in — up and down the streets of his neighborhood.

When a friend asked him why, he answered,

“I’m rolling my barrel so I won’t look like the only one here who’s a slacker!”

*          *          *

What’s the point of this story, my good Hartung?

It’s this: that given the tidal wave of authors writing and publishing books—well, the same thing’s happening to me that happened to Diogenes back then.

You see, there’s no shortage of people writing and publishing endless books (good ones, too!) every single day and on every topic under the sun, and certain people are so gripped with the irresistible urge to write something that ¡they’re shamelessly “decanting” the Greek and Latin classics into modern languages! And by doing that, they’re whoring out all their humanistic education and even the Muses themselves, whoring them no different than a disgraceful pimp exploits naïve young women. ¡As if—thanks to the behavior of certain loudmouths—the Classics weren’t already in crisis, and suffering plenty as it is!

(By contrast, when philosophers in the ancient world transmitted their dunderheaded philosophy to their students, they wrapped it up in certain secret signs and symbols so that none of it would accidentally get shared with the uninitiated!)

And that’s why—given this huge throng of writers and mass of popularizing translations — I thought it was a good idea for me to roll my barrel with Diogenes for a while. I don’t want to be the only one sitting around doing nothing!

(here comes the sarcasm...)

Because I know I’m "not up to writing up a systematic treatise" on those truly great works of literary art, and because nobody really needs my help to translate them, I’ve settled on just one “art”—yes, it does sound funny at first glance, but it’s probably the richest and most popular—namely, the Art of Drinking: because who doesn’t see how widespread drinking is?

Still, for an art that virtually everyone on planet Earth is eager for, it’s regrettable that until now, there haven’t been any guidelines or recommendations for people to follow, and hence learn to drink with greater knowledge, moderation, and sophistication.

I guarantee you that people ignorant of grammar don’t make as many mistakes in language on any given day as the number of gross mistakes you see made every single day by drinkers who get tripped up because they aren’t educated in the art of drinking.

It’s also pretty well established that as institutions, the Greeks had designated roles for those who dictate how much wine to drink and those who have to drink it, and the Romans had their own “symposiarchs” and “dictators” and the custom of appointing “kings” for their parties.

If an Art of Drinking was ever taught by anyone at any point, though, I haven’t found it. You see, in the various Convivial Questions and Symposiums written by Plutarch, Athenaeus, and even Plato and Xenophon — and by Macrobius on the Latin side — people tend to be long-winded and talkative, not alcoholics.

Only a crackpot, however, could have the temerity to deny that specific guidelines for the art of drinking can be found the same way they can for other arts. Because I realized this, and because I pitied the human race for being left helpless in this one exclusive domain, I quietly made notes of certain observations I’d stumbled upon through frequent experimentation.

I organized them into the three books that follow, and published them in order to equip people that are smarter and better educated than me with a more expansive reason and opportunity for reflecting and writing on the subject.

I’m content myself to have blazed some trails to the Art of Drinking; if others can come refine and enlarge it as their abilities allow, I won’t resent it.

And so, as I said, given the whirlpool not only of people writing, but also of people binging and emptying out wine barrels night and day, it’s been a pleasure to roll this Diogenes-barrel of mine: unlike everyone else, it’s not my fate (</sarc>) to serve a Corinthian crisis or greater literature—no, not with the “cold blood in my breast limiting my inspiration.”

I’m also glad to realize what I can and can’t do, having taken a good hard look at the financial straits my family is in. That’s why I have willingly followed Horace’s recommendation and undertaken to write about a subject matter that isn’t completely beyond my strengths.

(here comes the venom)

My other reason for “rolling this barrel” is the false opinion some people have of me, and the smears that certain trash talkers have put out there.

When they go accusing me to one and all of being a “world-champion wine drinker” (which isn’t true, and nothing I’ve ever done to them ever provoked them to say that, other than their being unable to live without blackening someone else’s good name); — those stupid idiots don’t understand that they’re actually “insulting” me in the most honorably way possible.

You see, the famous Plato, prince of philosophers, doesn’t think it’s absurd for the most beautiful reward for virtue to be being drunk for all eternity, even though I’m not aiming at that reward for my virtues (they’re far too small, you see, to be graced with so incredible a prize </sarc>).

You see, I do like wine more than water, but I’ve always controlled my enjoyment of it with such moderation that I’ve made sure that no one’s ever gotten misled or hurt by my drinking.

Meanwhile, those sobriety-worshippers who are slandering me—who go around signaling their virtue in public while binging in private—they’ll surely spell the doom of no few people with their destructive teaching, contaminated as they are by far more disgraceful sins and behavior.

Besides, I’d rather get called a slightly immoderate wine drinker than be accused — and rightly so — of being a riot-starter or teacher of evil or blasphemer or ghostwriter or perverter of scripture or disturber of the gospel’s peace and harmony or the author or abettor of a pernicious heresy or a church robber and nefarious Sacramentarian or an Anabaptist fanatic or, I might add, a disgraceful man-whore or imposter or plagiarist.

But enough—I’ll respond to my slanderers in a separate essay, and I’ll make sure they haven’t caught “a cicada by the wing.”

Still, if they do want to see how with what “fairness” and virulence they’ve been traducing my name, then allow them to direct their malicious eyes at me. Keep maligning me, and I’ll make sure they hear plenty about the malfeasance of their actions!

*          *          *

I dedicate this dabbling of mine to you, my dear Hartung — the majority of which I dashed off riotously and off the cuff, over drinks. Although your excellence deserves a greater gift, I had to limit myself not to what you deserve, but to what I could provide. And if I can’t honor you with a golden statue as you deserve, then please be content in the circumstances with this marble one—or rather, mud or clay—I’ve set up for you. If it’s modest and beneath your dignity, please consider that “God, too, looks fondly on our best efforts.”

Please don’t assume, though, that I dedicated these books on How to Drink to you because I think you’re getting debauched night and day in whorehouses overflowing with wine (nobody is more temperate than you are, and there’s no need to haul you back to a more productive life), or because even when the circumstances don’t require it, you’re a pro at playing the part of a friendly dinner companion, wherein, on account of your affability and poise, you deserve to be called a “man for all seasons.”

No, the only reason I’ve dedicated How to Drink to you is so that this poor, little homeless book of mine will have you for their patron. Under your patronage, it’ll fly free among the hands of women and men, protected from all the backbiting, smirks, and sneers of sycophants. I know it.

Please commend me to the Reverend Father, Abbot John. Pass my greetings on to Mr. Sebastian Hamaxurgus, the grain supervisor. In the past, we often—well, we didn’t roll Diogenes’ barrel together, but we did empty a few barrels of Bacchus…

Ansbach, January 1536

 

Notes in the Margin

Plagiarism goes a long way back. In 1577 a man name Franciscus Iunctinus of Florence ripped off Obsopoeus’ preface entirely – verbatim! Little did he know he'd get exposed by Google Books in 2020. There's a lesson there...

Poets and Painters in the Garden of Drunkenness [by Michael Fontaine]

This is post #3 in the series. Click here for part one and here for part two. Pro tip: click on any picture in this series to find out more about it.

 

Fun cocktail party fact: the word for drunkenness in ancient Greek is methe (pronounced méth-ee).

Actually, you already knew that. How?

Because it – or rather "she," since the noun is grammatically feminine – shows up in English in the words crystal meth and amethyst. (An amethyst is the gemstone you wear to keep the lady at bay.)

Methe was never really an official goddess in ancient Greece, but since people do “worship” her, Greek artists thought she made a great allegory. What's more, that allegory works in two ways, since (like “drunkenness” in English) methe can mean either intoxication (getting drunk) or addiction (alcoholism).

In The Art of Drinking, Obsopoeus exploits that ambiguity at several points, especially in the teaser he ends book one with:

The next book depicts the haunting portraits and problems of Drunkenness, composed by me in classical verse. You, binge drinker, who are constantly getting hammered, look at them as if you were looking in a mirror, and see how truly disgraceful the sight is! Once you’ve seen Drunkenness, you should turn and run from her for all your life, if you love the glory of true sobriety.

As he repeatedly says, Obsopoeus thinks getting buzzed or tipsy is okay, but getting drunk--hammered, blitzed--is wrong. It's a distinction worth bearing in mind.

Moreover, in speaking of "portraits" here, Obsopoeus means what he says literally, but in a totally surprising way.

He starts book two by referring to Apelles, one of the greatest of the "old master" painters of ancient Greece 2,500 years ago. Think Raphael, Michelangelo, Artemisia Gentilischi, and you're on the right track:

Among the paintings of Apelles—those monuments of old—that learnèd Greece celebrates in its writings, his ingenious hand left behind a masterpiece. It surpasses both the Venuses he created—the one of her emerging naked from the waves of the sea, and the other for the people of Kos that he only managed to get a start on. I’ll describe that picture, though its excellence outdoes my song and its precious art defeats my verses.

The picture at right is a Renaissance recreation by Titian of the first one of Apelles' lost paintings of Venus mentioned here, the "the Venus Anadyomene." He painted it around the year 1520, sixteen years before Obsopoeus wrote The Art of Drinking.

Apelles' other lost painting of Venus, the "Aphrodite of Kos," was also recreated in the Renaissance by Botticelli in the 1480s. I'm sure you've seen it:

Like Botticelli and Titian, Obsopoeus also wants to recreate a painting by Apelles. The difference is that instead of using pigments, he's going to use poetry.

In formal terms, Obsopoeus is going to give us an ekphrasis. That's the fancy term for a poet's attempt to outdo the beauty of a painting by describing that painting in beautiful language. It's an ancient and classical technique, and as a rule rather than exception, the poet's description ends up far more artificially alive and animated than any painting could ever be. 

That's true here, too. Obsopoeus spends the next few hundred lines describing a painting you could call “The Garden of Drunkenness.” It's a sweeping allegory for people who cannot stop partying when the party is over.

The crazy thing is, though, no such painting by Apelles ever existed. Obsopoeus made the whole thing up, inspired (it seems) primarily by Hieronymus Bosch’s triptych "The Garden of Earthly Delights" (1490–1510). That's the painting featured at the top of this post. Here's a wonderful short video introduction to the painting:

Like Bosch, Obsopoeus' "painting" shows us a green field filled with flowers and people. Unlike Bosch, his people are leisurely drinking wine at a festive gathering, and when the party's over, most of them get up and go home.

Others can't or won't, though. Instead, those people head for a walled garden in the center of the field. The garden is full of bad figures, like Hangover, Dementia, Self-Indulgence, Memory Loss, Depression, and a few others. And then--

Presiding in the center of the garden is a woman in royal raiment, drunk and surrounded by an entourage of women. A grassy garland’s encircling her styled hair, and she’s holding a phiale in her hands as if she’s about to drink from it. … As I studied these details, at first I thought the queen standing in their midst was Circe, but it wasn’t her. It was Drunkenness, labeled in Greek letters: Methe, Queen of all Wine-Drinkers.

This is a glass "phiale," or shallow wine bowl, from the time of Apelles (now in the Corning Museum of Glass in central New York).

By telling us that Methe is "holding a phiale in her hands as if she’s about to drink from it," Obsopoeus is doing something quite extraordinary.

To wit: at this central moment in his imaginary ancient Greek painting of Drunkenness drinking from a phiale, he’s alluding to a real ancient Greek painting of Drunkenness drinking from a phiale that once hung inside a shrine in Epidaurus, Greece -- and a famous one, to boot.

That painting was not by Apelles but by Pausias (4^th c. BC), another old master of ancient Greece. And what made it so famous is that it depicted Methe drinking wine from a crystal phiale, with her face visible through the glass. Not an easy feat!

(Pausias’ painting is lost, but his idea was imitated in the late Renaissance by Annibale Caracci, long after Obsopoeus' death. That's it at left.)

I'll come back to this point in a minute.

Meanwhile, what happens in the Garden of Drunkenness? As you might guess, things go badly.

The people inside continue drinking until they pass out. They transform into animals -- sheep, pigs, donkeys, monkeys -- and when they wake up, they start vomiting or attacking each other in a wild frenzy.

Some try to escape the Garden, but they're met by an entourage of old women as they do. The women lash the people trying to leave; they handcuff the compliant ones and bludgeon the resisters, and ultimately enslave them all. Obsopoeus then tells us their names: Fever, Edema, Psoriasis, Poverty, Old Age, and, yes, Death. Yikes!

Obsopoeus' allegorical painting is haunting and glorious. It’s the climax of the whole poem, and clearly designed to be. Rather than go into more detail, though, I'd like to share related material with you that I didn't have room for in How to Drink.

In my last post, I quoted a “liminary” poem in Greek by the Renaissance scholar Joachim Camerarius. In fact, Camerarius wrote two Greek poems for Obsopoeus’ book, and I’m pleased to present the other one here. It’s a miniature masterpiece, and it's a fantastic specimen of how learned and playful Renaissance poetry can be.

It alludes to the Garden of Drunkenness by way of Pausias' painting, and you could call it Poetry is a Painted Crystal Bowl. 

Like Obsopoeus, Camerarius is struck by the inherent competition between representing reality in the written word vs. the painter’s art. He heightens the similarity between those two arts by punning on the similarity of words used to describe each.

In his view, Obsopoeus’ written (engraphon) poetry is as beautifully, skillfully, and clearly executed as Pausias’ painted (graphike) crystal bowl because, through each one, you can discern the orderly rethe (features) of disorderly Methe (Drunkenness).

Here's the poem:

They say there was this one work of the painter’s art

    by Pausias that was really worth seeing:

Drunkenness drinking from a glass phiale that she was tipping up

    while facing forward, so that her whole face showed through,

and though the bowl covered her lips and eyes,

    all her features were still quite clear.

Unquestionably, then, this—a painting like that—was a work of art.

    But a greater work of art is the written one in your hands,

by our friend Vincent.

    It has the gorgeous adornment of the Muses’ verses,

it teaches you how to drink a lot with understanding and without harm,

    and it has found a system in an unsystematic business.

In it, not only will you be able to view Drunkenness,

    you can consort with her, and with pleasure and understanding.

Here’s the Greek for those of you who can read it. I’ve highlighted and color coded the many words that correspond or pun on each other in each part of the simile:

Παυσΐεω τέχνης ἔργον τόδε φασὶ γενέσθαι                  

      ἄξιον ἓν γραφικῆς, ὅ ττι μάλιστα θέας·

ἐξ ὑάλου πίνουσα Μέθη φιάλην ἐπέχουσα

      ἀντία, φαίνεσθαι ὥστε πρόσωπον ἅπαν,

τῆς φιάλης τ’ ἐπιπροσθούσης χείλεσσι καὶ ὄσσοις,

      εὔδηλ’ εἶναι ὅμως ὡς τάδε πάντα ῥέθη.

τεχνικὸν ὧδε γραφὲν—τίς δ᾿ οὔ φησ᾿;—ἦν ἄρα τοὖργον.

      μᾶλλον δ᾿ ἐν χερσὶν τεχνικόν ἐστι τόδε

ἡμετέροιο φίλου Νικήτα’ ἔγγραφον ἔργον,

      κόσμον ἔχον μέτρων πάγκαλον Ἀονίων·  

πολλὰ πιεῖν ἀβλαβῶς μετ᾿ ἐπιστήμης τε διδάσκον,

      καὶ λόγον εἰν ἀλόγῳ πράγματ᾿ ἐφευράμενον·

ἔνθαπερ εἰσιδέειν γε Μέθην δῆθ’ οὐ μονον ἔσται,

      ἀλλὰ συνεῖν’ ἀυτῇ εὖ καὶ ἐπιστάμενως.

 

Notes in the Margin

Since this is a blog for poetry lovers, I thought I'd end with a liminary poem of my own I wrote for How to Drink -- one of a couple I wrote in Latin. (Yes, to say that's old fashioned and nerdy beyond belief is an understatement.) I composed them in the Baroque tradition, a tradition that's distinguished by all kinds of wordplay.

Here's a one-liner I'm especially proud of because it manages a pun on methe, method, and methodicus. Depending on how you analyze it, that last word can mean (1) "methodical" or (2) "who talks about methe." The meter is dactylic hexameter.

 

The Dos and Don’ts of Social Drinking [by Michael Fontaine]

Social drinking can be a lot of fun. It can also be a major source of stress and anxiety, and a gateway to problem drinking. Not good. 

As I mentioned in my first post, the end of book one in The Art of Drinking discusses responsible drinking at social functions, while the entirety of book two is devoted to excess drinking. (I’ll discuss that in tomorrow’s post.)

That structure suggests Obsopoeus was especially alert to the gateway aspect of social drinking, and that may explain why he devotes so much attention to the topic. He knew that work parties, holidays and weddings could be make-it-or-break-it events.

Amazingly, Obsopoeus' advice for those occasions seems as wise and useful today as it was 500 years ago. Let me share some examples.

He starts by stressing the importance of etiquette, beginning the moment you walk through the door. First and foremost, he says, keep it light – even if you're upset about something:

If some hidden worry does happen to be gnawing at you, then lay your cross down the moment you step through the door or dispel it ASAP with a drink of wine—there’s no surer remedy for worries than alcohol.

You'd be hard pressed to find a textbook offering advice like that today, but Obsopoeus is sure it's sensible. In his experience, a single glass of wine – if necessary – won't inevitably send you down an irreversible path.  

He then offers a long series of dos and don’ts, elaborating on each point. For example,

• Do Follow the Conversation. No other interest, no pet hobby or topic that you bring up on your own, should force people to follow your inappropriate digression if they aren’t into it. No, you follow them. Surrender your ego to your group of friends. That’s how you avoid antagonizing people and the fallout that comes with it.

• Do Say Nothing Rather than Something Stupid. Nothing exposes the inferiority of a subpar intellect faster than a tongue droning on unthinkingly. Many win a reputation for wisdom through their silence and then lose it through their stupidity.

Ever met someone like that at a party?

Some of this may come instinctively to you. Unfortunately, it doesn't come instinctively to everyone. If you find yourself scratching your head at any of these next points, I encourage you to read his elaboration of each one:

• Don’t Try to Win Arguments
• Don’t Try to Impress People with Your Intelligence
• Do Be Careful with Your Jokes
• Don’t Use Foul Language
• Don’t Make Jokes at Other People’s Expense
• Do Keep Your Bodily Functions under Control

One of the best pieces of advice he offers is how to give a proper toast – and how to politely deflect peer pressure to join in if you're not into drinking. Here’s what you should say, he says:

 

“My fine friend, don’t you know how the Homeric warlords drank wine? They’d drink as much as each one’s heart desired. Everyone should down drinks as they please! I don’t know of any of those heroes ever acting like you were and telling someone, ‘Match that drinking!’ I grant I’m no epic hero, but what’s stopping us from following the heroic code?”

The heroes of the Iliad and Odyssey are shown drinking wine on many occasions, but never in any kind of competitive way. So, if those tough-as-nails guys — guys like Achilles and Agamemnon and Ajax — if those guys didn’t feel compelled to pound drinks, then you shouldn’t either. Brilliant! (And all the better if your host doesn't know who Homer was, because the last thing he or she will do is ask.)

Obsopoeus also offers some actionable advice about how best to refuse a drink when you're not into it:

Still, to avoid offending someone by refusing their offer of wine, do have a single drink if they’re pressuring you.

This is not the advice contemporary programs would offer today, but Obsopoeus has a point:

And that’s why—to avoid hurt feelings—I’m frequently drinking: it’s not because I’m thirsty, but so I won’t be a sober killjoy.

That said, he immediately admonishes us to never pressure other people to drink:

Forcing someone against their will is as serious a crime as chasing them away from flowing water when they’re thirsty. The sweetest glass is a drink that’s downed by choice, whereas forcing hurts the drinker and the wine alike. Wine makes friends and breaks friends; being forced to drink wine isn’t universally liked.

Obsopoeus finally sums up his advice with a golden rule borrowed from Ovid's treatise on sex education:

• Moderation must forever be your guiding principle.
• Everything needs to be kept within finite limits; and
• Consent to memorize the same thing Ovid taught his young man in love:

“I’m going to give you a specific drinking limit: Your mind and feet should both be doing their job.”

Again and again Obsopoeus comes back to that point, that moderation is the key to lasting sobriety, and if you're having trouble talking or walking, then you're past your limit. Time to head home.

I’ll talk about what happens when you don't in tomorrow’s post. In the meantime, I’d like to end this post with a liminary poem I didn’t have space to include in How to Drink.

When you wrote a book back in the Renaissance, it was customary to hit your friends up to write short poems—called “liminary” poems—to celebrate the publication. They were blurbs, basically, and the best of them enlighten and enhance the book that follows.

In How to Drink, I reprinted a liminary poem in Latin by Joachim Camerarius, a famous scholar of the German Renaissance. I didn’t have room for a second one Camerarius wrote in ancient Greek, and I’m pleased to share it here.

The conceit is that wine can be a bucking bronco, and art — and specifically, Obsopoeus’ "Art" of Drinking — will give you the confidence you need to "ride" it. (The conceit goes back to ancient Greek comedy and gets picked up elsewhere in the Renaissance; see footnote nine here):

Get set, all you wine enthusiasts out there!

     If your heart is willing but

your puny body lacks the strength,

     then smile and say hello to wine’s intoxication!

Vincent has devised the therapies in this Art for you

     so that you can drink wine without fear.

You little fellas don’t have to fear a big, tough guy anymore,

      because look, with art, even a kid can ride a mighty horse.

Here’s the Greek for those who can read it. (The phrase I translate “wine enthusiasts” literally means “suffering from the gentleman’s disease,” and it’s a recherché allusion to Aristophanes’ comedy Wasps, line 80.)

Θαρσεῖθ’ ὅσσ’ ἀγαθῶν ἀνδρῶν νούσῳ κατέχεσθε,         

      οἰνώδη θ’ ἱλαραῖς φρεσσὶ φιλεῖτε μέθην,

εἰ μὲν θυμὸς ἔνι στήθει πρόφρων, δύναμις δέ

      λείπετ’ ἐν ἀβληχρῷ σώματι δαμναμὲνη·

τοίης Νικήτης τέχνης τάδε φάρμακα πᾶσιν                  

      θῆκεν ὑμῖν ἀδεῶς οἰνοποταζέμεναι.                            

μή τινα νῦν δείσητε μέγαν μικροὶ ἄνδρα θρασύν τε.

      τέχνῃ παῖς ἵππον πόσσον ὁποῖος ἑλᾷ;       

We Have Sex Education. Should We Teach Drinking Education, Too? [By Michael Fontaine]

It sounds heretical to even ask, doesn't it?

In this world of ours, though, we’ve grudgingly come to admit that a few things that seem instinctive, really should be taught. Sex is one. Driving a car is another.

In all my life, though, I’ve never heard of anyone offering a course in the art of drinking alcohol.

I don't mean a twelve-step program to quit alcohol, mind you. I mean a course in how to enjoy alcohol responsibly, sustainably, and with discrimination.

Controversial? Sure. Risky, dangerous, potentially disastrous? That too.

But maybe it's not as nutty as it sounds – especially with so many of us stuck at home and drinking more than usual.

What might drink education look like? In fact, it might look very much like the book I recently rediscovered and translated as How to Drink: A classical guide to the art of imbibing. And even though it's five centuries old, the ideas it contains are as insightful, timely and actionable as ever. You simply won't believe it.

In much of the world, booze is an all-or-nothing thing. Thirty percent of us in the U.S. never touch the stuff. The other 70% of us do, with varying degrees of success. And for better or worse, virtually all of us learn about alcohol in the same hit-or-miss way that people once used to learn about driving cars or sex.

Five hundred years ago in Germany, a man named Vincent Obsopoeus saw a better way. Obsopoeus (pronounced Job? So pay us!!) was a very experienced drinker, and he decided to do the world some good by systematizing his experiences as rules and committing them to paper.

Incredibly, he wrote his treatise as a poem – a poem in classical Latin, the language spoken in ancient Rome 1,500 years before his time.

Obsopoeus' poem became an instant classic. It was read and reprinted – until the book was suddenly banned. It disappeared for centuries and was eventually forgotten.

No, Obsopoeus wasn't a rock star. He was the principal of an elite high school in Bavaria, and in his time he witnessed the birth of a poisonous new culture among young men of bingeing, hazing, peer pressure, and competitive drinking.

German universities had fraternities way back then – and frat parties, too. Drinking competitions started popping up, where the goal was to make the other guy pass out. Sounding like a critic far ahead of his times, Obsopoeus regarded this flush of hardcore masculinity he was seeing as “toxic.” (He says so explicitly.)

Worse, boozing was taking over professional life, too. The pressure to join in was overwhelming.

Obsopoeus saw all this and sought to halt it. He lifted his pen and composed a three-part poem called De Arte Bibendi, The Art of Drinking. He was inspired by a famous three-part poem from ancient Rome called The Art of Love, the world's first- or second-oldest course in sex education. (The competitor for that honor is India's Kama Sutra.) 

The difference between Ovid and Obsopoeus is that Ovid wasn't really serious about most of the advice he offers. Obsopoeus was, and he speaks with the candor of someone who's been around the block a few times.

The surprising thing is that unlike Alcoholics Anonymous, Obsopoeus doesn't just advocate teetotalism—that is, abstaining from alcohol completely.

Better, he thought, to take stock of the main occasions for drinking, see what works for most people best, and then systematize and institute some rules to guide our behavior.

In that respect, we can see a clear analogy with sex education in schools today. Sex ed typically recommends keeping sex within the bonds of a committed relationship. It doesn't recommend lifelong celibacy, which – if you look around – clearly isn't a sustainable way of life for most people.

Obsopoeus thought of booze the same way, and he uses that central insight to develop a number of practical strategies for managing our relationship to alcohol.

He begins by pointing out that there are three occasions on which we drink:

1. At home by ourselves,
2. Going out to meet friends, and
3. At social functions, like work parties and weddings.

Interestingly enough, Obsopoeus says home is far and away the best place to drink. Why? Because drinking at home gives us a chance to spend time with our significant other.

Obsopoeus spends the rest of his first book discussing how much to drink and how to behave on each of those occasions. He helps us identify the best drinking buddies, advises what to say and not say, and even how to give a toast.

In the second book, he turns to a far darker topic, excessive drinking, and repeatedly admonishes us not to go down that path.

In book three he does a complete about-face, and offers to teach us his secret way to win competitive drinking games--and it's not what you think.

In a series of blog posts this week, I’ll share some of Obsopoeus' insights and practical advice. I’ll also reveal some fascinating background material that I couldn’t squeeze into my book, material that reveals the creative impulse that led him to write it in the first place.

To listen to a podcast expanding on some of these thoughts, click here.

I’d like to end this first post, though, by reflecting on a problem I kept coming up against in translating the poem: namely, the choice between “drunk” and “alcoholic.”

Obsopoeus wrote his Art of Drinking in the 16^th century, long before it occurred to anyone to consider excess drinking a disease. Of course he recognized that drinking to excess can be self-destructive, that it ruins your family, finances, health, and even life; he says so himself. The idea of “alcoholism,” though, literally didn’t exist back then.

When I went to translate his poem, then, I faced a dilemma—and a morally loaded one.

Latin has many words, like vinosus, for someone who drinks too much. So, should I translate them “drunk” or “alcoholic”? The first is faithful to Obsopoeus and his world, the second to our own. But the second is anachronistic, and hence faithless to the author.

“In the animal kingdom,” remarked Dr. Thomas Szasz (1920-2012), the late professor of psychiatry, “the rule is, eat or be eaten; in the human kingdom, define or be defined.” Nothing proves his point like having to choose between drunk and alcoholic. One of those words brings naught but condemnation and stigma; the other brings compassion, help, even health insurance payments.

“No one can serve two masters,” quipped Jesus. Meanwhile “the translator is a traitor,” runs a famous Italian proverb (traduttore, traditore). Faced with the impossibility of serving both, I chose to betray both. I wound up charting a middle course, letting the context dictate whether to say “drunk” or “alcoholic.”

I hope readers will tell me what they think.

 

Notes in the Margin

In a nice review yesterday, Philip Martin wonders about one of my translations. 

Obsopoeus wrote, wine "has no steering wheel."

Wait, he was writing in the 16th century. Did they even have steering wheels then?

They did – on boats! (The Greek proverb literally says “Wine lacks rudders.”)

Jocelyn Dax (1954-2019) by Stacey Lehman

My friend Jocelyn Dax died on Monday. Her funeral is today.

We met decades ago when a mutual friend suggested that she offer me her extra ticket to the New York City Ballet at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center. We discovered we had a lot in common and quickly became close friends.

Jocelyn was funny, smart, sophisticated, and beautiful. She was tall, with long legs and unruly hair. She graduated from college at 19. She spoke perfect French! She loved music (Bob Dylan), poetry (Allen Ginsberg), mystery novels, and great food. I would say that the through line of our friendship was cooking, talking about food and cooking, and eating great food. Among my most dog-eared recipes are “Jocelyn’s Caponata,” “Jocelyn’s caviar pie,” “Jocelyn’s marinated pork loin and curried leeks,” “Jocelyn’s Shrimp with tomatoes and feta cheese.” You could drop in on Jocelyn and count on being fed a perfect egg or tuna-salad sandwich. If you planned a Passover Seder for twelve, Jocelyn would show up with chicken soup and 60 matzoh balls (“will that be enough?”). She baked my favorite kind of chocolate chip cookies. Her freezer was always filled with ice-cream, her pantry with snacks.

Jocelyn was sexy and lusty. I remember sitting in a movie theater when the male star of whatever French movie we were seeing took off his shirt. “Oh. my. god,” she said, just under her breath.

We did a lot of growing up together. Those were the years when, in the words of Alice Munro, "you realize that what you're living is your life." Marriages. Divorces. Love affairs. Career changes. And for her, a child.

Of course her proudest and most lasting achievement is her son Michael, an accomplished writer and environmentalist. Today he's a tall, handsome, confident man but I can't help but see him as a boy, sitting on the stairs of Jocelyn's lovely home to eavesdrop on the "grownups" in the dining room. 

The photo above was taken in Paris in the 1980s. I was on the last leg of my vacation; Jocelyn was starting hers. We met for an afternoon of walking around the city and catching up. I was awed by the way she managed every transaction with her beautiful French. Our first stop was a patisserie, where she selected two perfect pains au chocolate, which we ate on our way to dinner. “Don’t you just love eating and walking?” she said.

-- sdl

Quote of the Day: Prima Ballerina Tanaquil "Tanny" Let Clercq

“Souffles fall and so do dancers, and both survive: The main thing is to forget it.” 

                    from The Ballet Cook Book by Tanaquil “Tanny” Le Clercq

-- sdl

"Shaking Martinis" (from John O'Hara's "Butterfield 8")

<<<

"Tell Mrs. Liggett what you told me about shaking Martinis," said Nancy.

"Oh. yes," said Farley. "You know, like everyone else, I suppose, I've been going for years on the theory that a Martini ought to be stirred and not shaken?"

"Yes, that's what I've always heard," said Emily.

"Well, in London last year I talked with an English bartender who told me that theory's all wrong. American, he said."

"Scornfully," said Nancy.

"Very scornfully," said Paul.

"I can imagine very scornfully," said Emily.

 

-- John O'Hara, Butterfield 8 (1935)

>>>

Elizabeth Taylor won the "best actress" Oscar for her work in Butterfield 8 (1960)

 

-- DL

Happy hour at the Lehman Bar: Here's looking at you, kid

M. F. K. Fisher on the Martini

 

<<

The first Martini I ever drank was strictly medicinal, for threatened seasickness, and in spite of a loyal enjoyment of them which may be increasing in direct ratio to my dwindling selectivity of palate, I must admit that I still find them a sure prop to my flagging spirits, my tired or queasy body, even my over-timid social self. I think I know how many to drink, and when, and where, as well as why; and if I have acted properly and heeded all my physical and mental reactions to them, I have been the winner in many an otherwise lost bout with everything from boredom to plain funk. A well-made Martini or Gibson, correctly chilled and nicely served, has been more often my true friend than any two-legged creature.

 

-- M. F. K. Fisher, "To the Gibson and Beyond" (The Atlantic, January 1949)

>>

 

Remember: the only difference between a Martini and a Gibson is that the former gets an olive or lemon twist, the latter a cocktail onion or two. To make a "dirty" Martini serve with an olive and add a little of the olive juice from the jar. Vodka Martinis are OK, but for the full effect I recommend mixing gin (Hendrick's or Plymouth or Tanqueray or Beefeater) with a tablespoon of dry vermouth (preferably French: e.g. Noilly Prat); shake with ice, and serve straight up in frozen Martini glasses. Keep the gin (or vodka) in the freezer.

 

-- DL

The Mushroom Chronicles Part II: Prugnoli Frittata [by Barbara Hamby]

(Ed note: This is Part II of Barbara Hamby's mushroom chronicles. Find Part I here. sdl)

All human history attests                                     
That happiness for man, - the hungry sinner! -
Since Eve ate apples, much depends on dinner.
~Lord Byron, Don Juan, Canto XIII, stanza 99

We were out past midnight on Friday and arrived at the Sant'Ambrogio market too late the next morning for the ovoli mushrooms with their gorgeous red caps, but I noticed the box of little brown mushrooms with the label "Prugnoli." They were expensive--30 euros a kilo as opposed to 8 euros a kilo for the porcini--which led me to wonder if they were a seasonal specialty. I bought "due etti." An "etto" is an eighth of a kilogram, which is about a quarter of a pound. I asked the mushroom man, who my friend Sue says is called Cecco, what I should make with my little bag of prugnoli. His answer was "risotto o frittata." My husband, who loves rice, said, "No more rice," so I decided on a frittata. I remembered a small stand with fresh pecorino and eggs, so I bought six eggs that had a little handwritten sign: Uova di nostra gallina, eggs from our hen. I also bought some chives, because they would give the frittata some visual zip and not be as overpowering as onion.

Fresh prugnoli at the Sant'Ambrogio market

When I returned to the apartment, I looked up prugnoli to see what I had found. Little did I know that there was a Prugnolo Cult in Italy. It has been chilly and rainy in Florence this year, and perhaps that's the reason why I was lucky enough to find prugnoli in the market. Late May and April are their time in the world. In Southern Italy they are sometimes called fungo marzolino or marzulolo, because March is marzo, and they mature a little sooner in the warmer parts of Italy. In central Italy they are also called il fungo di San Giorgio, because they start popping up close to the feast day of St. George (April 23). I had always dreamed of being a member of a mushroom cult, and finally it had happened. Italy--the land where dreams come true.

I had due etti di prugnoli, and I set about making a frittata for lunch. First I washed them with great care, now that I knew they were at the center of a cult, and then sliced the larger ones.

Whole Prugnoli, washed.

Prugnoli sliced, ready for cooking

I'm winging it here. I don't have a recipe, but I've made omelets and frittatas before. When I was first married and traveling in Italy, I was a devoted slave of Marcella Hazan, who wasn't afraid of butter. And as I've said before, butter and mushrooms go together like Sinatra and The Sands, so I put a little of that glorious green extra-virgin olive oil in my skillet and a tablespoon or more (probably more ) of butter. When they had warmed up, I put in the prugnoli.

Olive oil + butter = magic

market-fresh chives

While the prugnoli were cooking, I chopped the chives. How much did I use? Half the bunch I'd bought at the market.

Here I will take a minute to rant about color in cooking. A dish has to be beautiful as well as delicious. When I'm making a salad, I want a range of colors. It's almost like painting. Three different greens--maybe the pale green of frisee, the dark green of arugula, and the medium green of escarole or butter lettuce--make a canvas, and then you add the purples of red onion and radicchio, the orange and crunch of carrots, and the crimson of tomatoes. In Italy right now, Piccadilly tomatoes are all the rage. They are smaller than Romas and larger than cherry tomatoes and are very sweet. A salad would be very compatible with this frittata.

How many eggs to use? I broke four into the dish, but it didn't seem to be enough, so I broke the other two and stirred them with a fork until I had a lovely golden bowl. Then I added salt and freshly ground pepper.

How are the prugnoli doing?

They've cooked down a bit with their lovely juices mixing with the oil and butter. I taste one and it's perfect, still firm but softening. Time to add the egg mixture:

Now that's a lovely brown and gold canvas, but it needs something:

Chives! However, I have an kitchen equipment emergency. This skillet has no lid, so I place a white ceramic dinner plate on top of the skillet and try not to check it for five minutes. I'm aiming for the consistency of a just baked custard: set enough to hold its shape but still trembling in the center.

The result makes a satisfying lunch for me and breakfast the next morning for two. One of my favorite Italian cookbooks, Antipasti by Julia della Croce, says that room temperature frittata makes a welcome addition to an antipasti selection. I'm convinced! Now I'm dreaming of an antipasti party with at least ten dishes and prosecco and Negronis. Everyone's invited!

Barbara Hamby is the author of six books of poems, most recently Bird Odyssey (2018) and On the Street of Divine Love: New and Selected Poems (2014), both published by the University of Pittsburgh Press, which also published Babel (2004) and All-Night Lingo Tango (2009).She has also edited an anthology of poems, Seriously Funny (Georgia, 2009), with her husband David Kirby. She teaches at Florida State University where she is Distinguished University Scholar.

Much Depends on Dinner: The Mushroom Chronicles [by Barbara Hamby]

“All human history attests                                     
That happiness for man, - the hungry sinner! -
Since Eve ate apples, much depends on dinner.
~Lord Byron, Don Juan, Canto XIII, stanza 99

Porcini Risotto

In Tallahassee, where I live most of the time, we have a hot sultry summer that is often very wet, and while everyone is running from air-conditioned cars to air-conditioned rooms, chanterelle mushrooms pop up all over the city. A friend has secret chanterelle spots, and I am often the beneficiary of her largesse. This was how I started making mushroom risotto. When the chanterelles weren't in season, I turned to making risottos with portobellos and oyster mushrooms from my local food coop, but nothing prepared me for the Italian world of mushrooms.

To cook from the market in Italy is like entering a terrestrial paradise. Florida State University has a study abroad program in Florence, and it has made living in Italy accessible for two academics. The first time we lived in Florence, I'd go to the Sant'Ambrogio market near our apartment to practice my Italian and learn about food. I spent a lot of time furious, because I had been a vegetarian for eleven years and didn't know about the glorious world of antipasti and how vegetables could be prepared so they weren't a greasy mess or edible cardboard. I learned that there was a world beyond salads and stir fries.

That first fall of 1992, a young woman at the market taught me about arugula and other wild greens I'd never heard of and came to love, crave, and grow in my own garden. Last year I became obsessed with wild mushrooms from the Sant'Ambrogio market. I made a mushroom risotto with porcini, and this year when we returned, the mushroom man at the Sant'Ambrogio market was one of my first stops.

This guy is all business until he sees how much you love his mushrooms. He usually wears a plaid shirt over his substantial belly, and his hands look as if he has dug some of his product out of the loamy soil. They are big hands with thick fingers. Often there's a cigarette pasted to his lower lip. I told him I wanted to make a "un bell risotto" with porcini, and he chose three medieval specimens for me. Here they are before I washed them, glorious and earthy.
And here they are washed and sliced:

I think the white mushrooms are fresher, and I discarded some of the yellow stems with holes, because they looked a little tough.

Making risotto is a very meditative activity. There's a lot of standing and stirring involved, so put on some music. My husband likes to cook to rhythm 'n' blues, but I prefer Mozart or Bach. The Goldberg Variations are my current crush with Glenn Gould humming away. This is also a great time to memorize poetry or recite the poems you've memorized. The rice won't care. I've memorized Hamlet's six soliloquies. Hamlet and Beethoven are a great combination. Or you can just surf along on your own internal waves. You're on your feet, so wear comfortable shoes. I've made risotto wearing flip-flops and lived to regret it.

I started making risotto with a recipe I found on line, but I simplified it immediately when cooking with chanterelles, because they are so delicate.

Click through for recipe and illustrated instructions

Gastronomical Perfection [by M. F. K. Fisher]

<<
   I feel now that gastronomical perfection can be reached in these combinations: one person dining alone, usually upon a couch or a hill side; two people, of no matter what sex or age, dining in a good restaurant; six people, of no matter what sex or age, dining in a good home.
   Three or four people sometimes attain perfection either in public or in private, but they must be very congenial, else the conversation, both spoken and unsaid, which is so essential a counterpoint to the meal's harmony, will turn dull and forced. Usually six people act as whets, or goads, in this byplay and make the whole more casual, if, perhaps, less significant.
   The six should be capable of decent social behavior: that is, no two of them should be so much in love as to bore the others, nor at the opposite extreme should they be carrying on any sexual or professional feud which could put poison on the plates all must eat from. A good combination would be one married couple, for warm composure; one less firmly established, to add a note of investigation to the talk; and two strangers of either sex, upon whom the better acquainted diners could sharpen their questioning wits.
>>

-- M.F.K Fisher
   An Alphabet of Gourmets

Quiz:  Name the poem written by W. H. Auden in response to this passage. --- sdh

Happy Fasnacht Day! [by Laura Orem]

The Fight between Carnival and Lent, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, oil on panel, 1559

It's Shrove Tuesday, and while New Orleans may have Mardi Gras, we here in Pennsylvania Dutch Country have Fasnacht Day.

What is a fasnacht, you ask? It is a kind of super-doughnut, made with potato flour, sugar, and lard. Don't scoff. They are terrific. They are only sold one day a year - today, the day before Ash Wednesday. Historically, they were the last gastronomic hurrah before Lent, a way to use up all the sugar and lard in the pantry before forty days of fasting began.  As you might imagine, they are not health food. No one, as far as I am aware, has ever calculated the calories in a fasnacht. Really, it's better not to know.

What distinguishes fasnachts from ordinary doughnuts is their muchness. They are heavier (potato flour and lard will do that) and usually significantly bigger. They have a wonderfully crispy outside and a decadently soft inside. They come in many varieties - glazed, powdered, filled - but my favorite are ones that are simply dusted with granulated sugar. Heaven.

Fasnachts are serious business here in the Susquehanna Valley. Advertising begins weeks ahead of time, and bakeries and supermarkets open early to handle the rush. When I went to the grocery store to pick up ours today, there were extra tables outside, piled high with fasnachts of all complexion wafting their yeasty aroma through the chilly air, enticing any reluctant buyers (not that there are many of those). And if you think you'll just pick up your dozen on the way home from work, think again: by suppertime, there is not a fasnacht left to be had for love nor money in York County.

So, while the good people of rural Pennsylvania are not ones for gaudy beads, jazz music, and excess alcohol, they do have their moments of over-indulgence. Ah, fasnachts! How we love you!

There is No Final Word [by Vincent Katz]

For my final Guest Author post (already!) I am going to do a survey of things I see around my desk that are inspiring me as I look out the windows at water dripping off pendulous icicles and streaks of shadows and dying sun on the softening snow.

First off, there is Anne Carson’s If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho (2002), in which Carson makes a representation of the classical text in its original language. She makes the fragmentary textual condition palpable. Many ancient poems come to us from papyruses that have been irreparably torn, resulting in the loss of words, lines, stanzas. Other fragments come to us in citations from later authors. Unlike most previous translators, who chose to translate only poems of Sappho’s that approach or can be made to emulate a complete state, Carson translated all the fragments we have. In her introduction, Carson writes:

In translating I tried to put down all that can be read of each poem in the plainest language I could find, using where possible the same order of words and thoughts as Sappho did. I like to think that, the more I stand out of the way, the more Sappho shows through. This is an amiable fantasy (transparency of self) within which most translators labor.

Carson is funny when discussing the uses to which poetry may be put by grammarians and pedants. We possess one of Sappho’s lines because someone named Apollonios Dyskolos in the second century CE cited it in his treatise On Conjunctions. The line is, “Do I still long for my virginity?” What a fantastic line! And how tantalizing not to have the rest of the poem.

She even goes on to that most remote category all classicists are familiar with, alternately delighting and despairing: when a song of Sappho’s is referred to but not quoted. In this category is a famous line from Solon recounted by Stobaios:

Solon of Athens heard his nephew sing a song of Sappho’s over the wine and since he liked the song so much he asked the boy to teach it to him. When someone asked why, he said, So that I may learn it and then die.

Carson writes, “As acts of deterrence these stories carry their own kind of thrill—at the inside edge where her words go missing, a sort of antipoem that condenses everything you ever wanted her to write…”

The Solon story reminds us that Sappho, as most ancient Greek and Roman poets, was a musician as well as a lyricist. In addition to her poems, she is credited with inventing the plectrum and the Mixolydian mode.

Carson’s translation of fragment 118 reads in its entirety:

yes! radiant lyre speak to me

become a voice

Jane Harrison’s Prolegomena to the study of Greek Religion, first published in 1903, helped to introduce a much more various method of understanding the ancient Greek world. She was one of the first to examine pre-Olympian cults and rituals, extending the study of mythology farther into the past and comparing it to similar patterns in diverse cultures.

Harrison’s words and her demonstrations of a shift from female- to male-centered religion resonate today:

To the primitive matriarchal Greek Pandora was then a real goddess, in form and name, of the Earth, and men did sacrifice to her. By the time of Aristophanes she had become a misty figure, her ritual archaic… Pandora is in ritual and matriarchal theology the earth as Kore, but in the patriarchal mythology of Hesiod her great figure is strangely changed and minished. She is no longer Earth-born, but the creature, the handiwork of Olympian Zeus… Hesiod loves the story of the Making of Pandora: he has shaped it to his own bourgeois, pessimistic ends… To Zeus, the archpatriarchal bourgeois, the birth of the first woman is but a huge Olympian jest… Such myths are a necessary outcome of the shift from matriarchy to patriarchy…

Denys Page’s 1959 book, History and the Homeric Iliad, like similar books in this University of California Press series by E.R. Dodds and Hugh Lloyd-Jones, derives from the Sather Lectures he gave at UC Berkeley in 1957. Attempting to analyze the historical basis of the epics, he writes the following about the so-called dark ages in Greece after the end of the Mycenean era:

Towards the end of this period of eclipse a single voice was uplifted loud and passionate enough to ring through the ages. On the summit of a stony, rugged hill near Mount Helicon, among the untrodden ways, stood the joyless hamlet of Ascra—a bad place in winter, and disagreeable in summer, according to old farmer Hesiod. The earliest Greek personality known to us since the Mycenaean era, he tells us what he and others thought of the times in which they lived—not only the immediate present, but all the years since the age of heroes ended. And the emphasis falls not so much on the material as on the spiritual degeneration of Greece.

In order to best comprehend poems from Classical antiquity, it is necessary to consult the comprehensive commentaries that are periodically published to accompany specific authors. In the case of Hesiod, two massive publications by Martin Litchfield West (1937-2015) are essential reading. They are Theogony Edited with Prolegomena and Commentary (1966) and Works & Days Edited with Prolegomena and Commentary (1978). West brings a seemingly inexhaustible knowledge of manuscripts, Greek and Latin literature of all periods, usages in all of Homer and all other Greek poets. In addition, he was one of the first Western scholars to study systematically parallels and predecessors in Babylonian, Hittite, Jewish, and Egyptian traditions, not to mention relevant later parallels.

We’ll leave this week’s final words to him. Here is West on Theogony:

When I say that Hesiod’s narrative is more condensed than Homer’s, I do not mean that he never says a word more than he need. His brevity is a brevity of thought, not of language… The most important and not the least remarkable fact about the dialect of Hesiod’s poems is that it is essentially the same as that of Homer…

Written language was a recent importation to Greek culture when Homer’s and Hesiod’s poems achieved the forms in which we have them now. In his intro to his Works and Days commentary, West writes this on Hesiod’s compositional process:

It is not to be supposed that having written a poem down Hesiod ceased to recite it, or that he abstained from reciting it in the middle of writing it down. With the work growing by stages, each activity may at times have run ahead of the other. After composing a passage in his mind he might either recite it to people before he wrote it or write it before he recited it. There is no reason why it should make a visible difference to our text. What he recited, however, would probably be closer to the written version when he had already written it than before, because the act of writing or slowly dictating a particular version must inevitably have tended to impress it on his memory. In the end, then, he was probably reciting a multipartite poem much like what he left in writing.

Except no! Keeping to our theme of song as poetry, we’ll end with Eric von Schmidt (1931-2007), a singer-songwriter who inspired Dylan in the early days (and whose album The Folk Blues of Eric von Schmidt appears on the cover of Dylan’s seminal Bringing It All Back Home, among other culturally significant detritus). Von Schmidt has a heart-breaking intensity to some of his vocal performances. It is so on his haunting version of “Fair and Tender Ladies,” written by Maybelle Carter of the Carter sisters. But in true folk tradition, von Schmidt invents lyrics to add to Carter’s. And in that, he is right in the tradition of the rhapsodes of Homer and Hesiod’s time. See you at the intersection of Song and Word!

Much Depends on Dinner: Cooking Latkes with Gabriella Gershenson [by Stacey Harwood-Lehman]

"Fried things are highly popular at any celebration:  they add a piquant variety to the menu; they are nice to look at, possess all of their original flavor, and can be eaten with the fingers, which is always pleasing to the ladies." Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, The Physiology of Taste.

This is really a public service announcement disguised as a cooking post. In case you hadn't noticed, we're deep into latke season here.  If you read through this post, study the photos, and follow the instructions, you will never have to eat the leaden, oily, flabby discs that so often pass as latkes in restaurants and delis, and, yes, your relatives' homes.  My friend, the superb writer and editor Gabriella Gershenson  has generously agreed to share the outstanding recipe passed down from her Latvian babulenka and perfected for the modern kitchen by her mother, the superb chef and caterer Anna Gershenson. Your search for latke heaven ends now.  By heaven I mean that your latkes will be thincrispflavorful and so light that you will dispense with all social niceties such as dishes, knives, and forks and eat them with your hands as soon as you can after they emerge from their brief bath in bubbling oil.  

We begin:  As Anna instructs in the recipe at the bottom of this post, assemble your ingredients and cooking accouterments.  You will need several bowls, sheet pans, lots of paper towels, some aluminum foil; the kinds of things that may not immediately come to mind.  If you have to stop mid-cooking to find them, latke perfection could be out of reach this time around.  (Below, the ingredients: eggs, flour, onions, potatoes, oil. You will also need salt and pepper.) 

Before we took this photo, Gabi and I had already peeled and cubed a boatload of russet potatoes.  The type of potatoes is key: you want a starchy variety.  I'll leave it to the food scientists to explain why. You also want to have a lot of oil on hand (Ed. note: Gabi uses Canola.)  
Once you're at the point shown in this photo, you grind the onions and potatoes.  "WTF? Grind? Every latke I've ever made has used shredded potatoes." I know, I know, me too.  At first Gabi and I couldn't believe it either but you do grind the potatoes. You fit your food processor with this blade and blast away. How do you know when your potatoes have been ground to the proper texture?  You listen to Anna: When you see that the potatoes are beginning to slide in the bowl and don't just sit attached to the walls, and moisture starts appearing, it's time to stop.

(Here is where we pause for a brief departure from Commandment #2 to say thank you to the god of small kitchen appliances for creating the food processor, without which we would be doing  this.)

Next, you dump your first batch of ground onions and potatoes into a strainer set over a large bowl.  Grind and strain the remaining potatoes and onions and when you're done, a goodly amount of milky water will have accumulated in the bowl. Peer through the water and you will see that the bottom of the bowl is coated with a thick white paste.  This is the potato starch. Pour off the water, being careful to preserve the starch (see photo, right).  

Garrett Hongo makes Tuna Poke [by Stacey Lehman]

Every Friday for the past 40-odd years the Owl’s Head Lobster Co has set up shop in the parking lot of the Triphammer Mall here in Ithaca, NY. At 6:45 am the two friendly proprietors, who have traveled from the coast of Maine, open the van's back doors and do a brisk business selling seafood to a long queue of in-the-know locals. A few years ago a small farmers market took hold nearby so it’s possible in one stop to find everything one could want for summer meals of fresh fish, corn, and tomato salad (or corn and tomato salad).

The Owl's Head Whiteboard

I try to get to the truck before nine or risk missing out on the choicest cuts. Lately Owl’s Head has carried sushi-grade tuna. At $19.99/lb it’s pricey but still a relative bargain compared to what it would cost in New York City or even at our local Wegmans. I haven’t been able to resist buying a rich dark slab whenever it appears on the whiteboard that lists the day’s catch.

My go-to preparation of this tuna has been poke (POH-kay), the Hawaiian specialty that hit the mainland a few years ago and spawned a wave of “fast-casual” restaurants that serve both traditional and custom versions of the now popular dish. An added benefit is that it is served raw; no need to turn on the oven or light the grill on a hot summer day.

Turns out that nearly 15 years ago, long before poke became trendy, Garrett Hongo published a recipe in the New York Times. I basically follow his recipe though I've been unable to find kukui nuts so I add a tablespoon or so of toasted sesame seeds. I also add a bit of tamari.

I wonder if Garrett would approve of my version. Here's what he says about his experience of eating this delicious dish: 

Thirty years ago, in Hauula, on the windward side of Oahu, my family gave a big homecoming party for me at the Crescent Diner on Kamehameha Highway. I was 19 and hadn't been back to Hawaii since I was 10, when my parents moved us to Los Angeles. When I arrived at Honolulu Airport, the entire clan was waiting for me. My grandfather had assembled all the aunts and uncles and the cousins of all ages and put a trio of them together in a guitar and ukulele band. What song they sang I can't recall, but it moved me to tears.

My grandparents owned the diner, and they had closed it for the celebration. On a long wood counter by the cash register were trays of nuts, smoked octopus, dried squid and bottles of Primo, a local beer. One of my aunts brought from the kitchen three long platters of a dish she had picked up from the chef at the hotel kitchen where she worked. This was poke (pronounced POH-kay), the Hawaiian raw-fish salad made with marlin and ahi (yellowfin) or aku (skipjack) tuna. Though I'd often eaten sashimi, poke was then completely new to me -- delicious rubies of cubed fish dressed in light sesame oil, garnished with minced bits of reddish-brown seaweed and the ground centers of kukui nuts. 

Continue reading and get the recipe here. 

Thanks Garrett! 

-- sdl

The Wimbledon: The drink for fans of Roger, Serena, Raffa, the Djoker, Isner et al [by David Lehman]

TTry this variant of the Pimm's Cup while watching Wimbledon:

One ounce Pimm's
One ounce gin (Boodles or Broker's)
Three ounces lemonade or Limonata (San Pellegrino)
One ounce club soda
One lemon wheel
Ice Cubes
Top with club soda
Optional: teaspoon of Cointreau; thin cucumber wheel; thin  orange wheel; pitted cherry.

Adding gin is always an option.  -- DL

 

A Peck of Pickles and Poetry [review of "The Pickling Poet"] by Jennifer L. Knox

As a poet and cook, the pickle/poetry connection is obvious to me. A poem preserves a moment. No matter what emotion of that moment (wonder, surprise, grief, love, etc.), in its preserved poem form, we can turn it over in our hands and watch the light pass through it. We place the book on a shelf, return to it years later, and the poem comes alive again. A pickle freeze-frames one spectacular (hopefully—why would you pickle anything mediocre?) moment in the life of a cucumber, or a carrot, or an okra pod, as well as the spices symphonically swirling like stars in its brine. Unsinkable pink, white and brown peppercorns, greenish-gray bay leaves crisp as clarinet reeds, star anise like tiny rusty tractor parts. We place the jar on the shelf, unscrew the lid later, and that bright moment recommences.

The connection’s also obvious to proprietors of The Pickling Poet, Alex and Tanya Radison of Queens, New York. “We love pickles, and we love poetry, so why not join the two in a way that's never been done before, and elevate them both in the process?” Alex explains on The Picking Poet’s website, featuring inspired homemade pickles and jams made from fresh, locally sourced ingredients. The name was born in one of those moments that arises when one listens intently, as poets do habitually. “Tanya saw me cooking up one of my first batches of pickles and joked: ‘I could have married a doctor or lawyer. Instead, I married a pickling poet.’”

Their passion for combining the two is especially evident in the product names, which are inspired by some of the Radison’s favorite poets.

The Shakespeare: “Dill and garlic is our original blend, and he's the OG bard.” 
The Emily: A bread and butter blend that’s “a darkly sweet and a little melancholic.”
The Walt: A tri-color mustard blend “bursting with flavor, just like his personality which refused to be contained.”
The Bashó: Pickled edamame surprises in blend, brined with sesame, ginger, and rice vinegar.
The Maya: After Maya Angelou, hot pickled okra with a complex, strong cayenne kick. This was my fave of the flavors I tasted.
The Soronji: A curry-inspired recipe with cumin, cardamom and cinnamon. “I wanted to create something that celebrated her homeland, so I went for it. Interestingly, although Sarojini worked to unite people, this blend tends to divide them: people either absolutely love it or hate it.”
The Carmen: The only flavor named for a living poet, Carmen Gimenez Smith, is an ode to Latin American cuisine with sweet peppers and a bright orange habanero pepper brined in jalapeños, black peppercorns, cilantro and lime.
The Poe: Coming soon, this flavor will feature pickled strawberries, shaped like Tell-tale Hearts.

Along with pickles, they also create fabulous jams (the color of the blood orange strawberry surpasses the sunsets in all the Mad Max movies combined) and offer vegan honey, which is exemplary.

Every order includes a poem from Brine, The Pickling Poet’s own poetry magazine. You can download the complete journal from their website or purchase it from them at any of their market appearances. I was delighted to discover Sarah Etlinger’s poem, “Crossroads of America,” in my home delivery. 

Teenage girls, hair pulled back or cropped hugging necks, in cutoff shorts,
prop naked feet against the porch.
I see them all, stuck in a sort of trapped dream,
where tomorrow is more plowing more eating more fireflies
more picking more more more.

The effect was equal parts poem and pickle. I could’ve never imagined how wonderful that poem would make me feel—riding along as it had, all the way from Queens, with a menagerie of singular pickles and jams. As the Dude says in The Big Lebowski, “It really tied the room together, man.”

Submissions for volume 2 of Brine open on June 1. They’re also seeking an image for the cover. The selected artist will receive $50 and a free contributor copy of the journal. The Pickling Poet also has a Poet of the Month, whose work you can peruse on their website.

Jennifer L. Knox is the author of several celebrated volumes of poetry, most recently Days of Shame and Failure (Bloof Books, 2015). She is  is the proprietor of Saltlickers, a small-batch artisanal spice company. You can find Saltlickers ' herb and spice infused salts and finishing sugars online, at central Iowa farmer's markets, at the Ames CSA, Farm to Folk, and in a few very cool speciality stores. 

Terence Winch's "Known Universe" isn't caviar to the general [by David Lehman]

 

Terence Patrick Winch's new book is The Known Universe

and it is now Michael Lally's new favorite book.

The Known Universe should become better known

because it is universally appealing.

Among my favorites is "Small Potatoes,"

which is what Hyman Rioth says to Michael Corleone

about someone the latter wants bumped off.

"Small Potatoes" is not small beer. It is not small time.

It is living large and dining with the gusto of a fat man having dinner.

I was lucky enough to interview the author who confided

about his writing "process," which is a word I hate,

"You have to break a lot of eggs to make an omelette,

and the proof of the pudding is in the brandy you light, the fig-infused vodka you use to make a vesper

with gin and a little Lillet, shaken not stirred, like the hero of at James Bond movie in the glory years,

or when the champagne flowed in the locker room after the Brooklyn Dodgers won the World Series.".

-- David Lehman

 

2017 Gift Guide: Support Poets! by Stacey Lehman

Of course poetry books top your gift list but you can also support poets by ordering gifts from those who express their creativity by making things that you can wear, eat, and hold. Here are a few suggestions.Click on the image for more information. If I've left someone out please add a description and link in a comment:

 

Clockwise from top left: Jennifer L. Knox makes herb and spice-infused artisanal seasoning blends with "no preservatives, MSG, dairy or other creepy shizznit." Deanna Dorangrichia makes stunning utilitarian ceramics that honor the Japanese aesthetic of wabi-sabi. NEA fellow Molly Brodak is the genius behind the delicious and whimsical Kookie House. Find embroidered ornaments and other decorative flourishes in Matthew Mahaney's etsy boutique Ice Cream Cats. Sade LaNay's Silk Creations etsy shop sells hand-painted silk scarves and cards. Silk Creations. is a is a social enterprise program of St. Margaret's House, a day center for women and children challenged by poverty. Kristy Bowen's dulcet dancing girl press and studio makes chapbooks, stationary, and beautiful custom jewelry hair clips (I want one!). In addition to publishing A-list poets (Jennifer L. Knox, Peter Davis, two name two favorites), this year Shanna Compton's bloof books is offering a limited number of hand made notebooks in various sizes. Generous discounts are available through the end of the year via Square (code BYE2017). Paige Taggert created MACTAGGART Jewelry in 2003 and her beautiful wearable designs have gained a wide following. She too is offering a 20% discount till the end of the year. 

If you happen to do your shopping in New York's Hudson Valley, stop in at Mansion and Reed, a shop and guesthouse operated by Justine Post and her twin sister Lia. 

Books make fine gifts too! Here are three I recommend: 

"Poems in the Manner Of . . . " continues to draw rave reviews as does The Best American Poetry 2017. Mitch Sisskind's New School poetry reading was "the best ever" according to more than one in the audience. Find a sampling of the Milania series from "Trump Poems" here. For your copy of the book, contact Mitch directly.