The Best American Poetry

In Monet's Dining Room: Remembering Milton Glaser (1929-2020) [by Rozanne Gold]

 

"Milton’s designs were sumptuous, color-drenched, vivid, expressive and…mouthwatering."

The art world, to be sure, is mourning the loss of one its greatest graphic designers and typography innovators of all time. Milton Glaser’s evocative images are emblazoned in our collective conscience as a narrative that accompanied more than sixty years of American culture. Milton touched the lives of millions of art and pop-culture lovers, but more specifically, as a teacher-of-eminent-status at the School of Visual Arts, where he inspired generations of young designers.

 Less known are the remarkable contributions Milton made to the culinary landscape – in fact, he was an amuse-bouche of the meal that would become America’s first food revolution in the 1970s.  From restaurants to products to supermarkets and cookbooks, Milton’s designs were sumptuous, color-drenched, vivid, expressive and…mouthwatering.  Whereas Milton’s brushstrokes stoked so many worlds – music, poetry, book design, fashion, to name a few -- it is the world of food, supermarkets, packaged goods, and restaurants that brought us together.

Rozanne (left) and Nicky in the Gracie Mansion kitchen. The fern wallpaper was chosen by Mary Beame, wife of Abe, the 104th mayor of NYC.

When I was 24 and the chef to New York Mayor Ed Koch, Milton asked me to help him rebrand the Grand Union supermarket chain. The prototype was their flagship store on the Upper East Side near  Gracie Mansion where I was living. I had just returned from Italy where I studied with cookbook author Giuliano Bugialli. Milton was keenly interested in freshly-made pasta, pesto and mozzarella di bufala, all-things Italian, but also obscure in the late 1970s. We tasted jarred goods, canned foods, and everything from the deli cases and hatched a plan to not only redesign the stores but everything edible, too. What a stunning education to be in his orbit, and to watch his beautiful hand translate ideas into design.  

The Gold and Glaser design for the Grand Union supermarket chain. "We hatched a plan to not only redesign the stores but everything edible, too."

Milton wrote “The Underground Gourmet” (for the New York Herald Tribune and later for New York Magazine), but his sophistication about food and dining spread widely above ground as well. In addition to our mutual reverence for Italian food, we celebrated our ancestral roots with a love of Hungarian cooking, and were suckers for the cabbage strudel from Mrs. Herbst, whose bakery was not far from Grand Union. By the early 1980s, nouvelle cuisine was emerging and the focus of our city’s gastronomes shifted to everything French. Milton introduced me to the decidedly non-nouvelle work of Mireille Johnston, the author of “Cuisine of the Sun” (classical dishes from Nice and France, 1976) and “Cuisine of the Rose” (the food of Burgundy), whose wonderful cookbooks he designed.  

For the next many decades we worked together on other projects: We created American Spoon Foods (a company specializing in regional food products), and collaborated on all the menus for Aurora, the Rainbow Room, and Windows on the World (above, all three-star restaurants) when I was chef/director of Baum +Whiteman, the consulting group responsible for the creation and operation of all these places.

But the project closest to our hearts never got built: Monet’s Dining Room, to be located in the Barbizon Hotel on East 63rd Street in Manhattan. Monet was Milton’s muse (I’m certain he had many), and the restaurant’s interiors were designed to look like Monet’s house in Giverny, France – complete with its daffodil yellow dining room and powder blue kitchen. Milton hired me to be the Director of Restaurants and sent me on a two-week trip to France to eat in dozens of two- and three-star restaurants with master chef Richard Burns who was to become the restaurant’s executive chef. It was a joy of a lifetime – to dine and meet the world’s most important chefs – Paul Bocuse, Alain Senderens, the Troigros brothers, Alain Chapel – and to walk around the lush gardens of Monet’s home in Giverny. 

Claude Monet's La salle a manger, an inspiration for "Monet’s Dining Room" to be designed by Glaser and located in the Barbizon Hotel on East 63rd Street in Manhattan."After a year the project was halted and simply remained a dream." photo © The Claude Monet foundation.

Today, sitting at my dining room table, I longingly flip through the pages of a paper I wrote after that remarkable research trip.  “A Gastronomic Trip to France: A Critical Evaluation/September 1982” – which included dozens of restaurant critiques and an interview with Claire and Jean-Marie Toulgonat, nephew of Claude Monet (and a distant relative of then VP, George Bush). I learned that Monet loved cepes more than anything in the world; that he adored duck wings grilled with nutmeg; that Monet’s cook was a woman; and that a typical formal dinner at his home would include a soup of truffles (from Perigord only), foie gras, a fish course, game course (another favorite was woodcock), and a roasted meat (such as roasted turkey with marrow).  Milton was, of course, delighted with such details and very happy to hear that the Troisgros’ chefs requested an invitation to the opening of “Monet’s Dining Room.”  It had been nothing short of a thrill to see Milton’s concept spring to visual life in his inimitable drawings. But after a year, the project was halted and simply remained a dream.  

Milton had big appetites and understood at his core that both art and food induce hunger, longing and desire, and that by sharpening and stimulating our senses – through the manipulation of materials, design, ingredients – we were all performers in life’s huge canvas.  I was consumed with his teachings. 


Rozanne Gold, is one of the most prominent women in the food world. As an award-winning chef, author, journalist and restaurant consultant she helped shape America’s culinary landscape as a pioneer in the food revolution that began in the 1970’s. A four-time winner of the James Beard Award and recipient of the Julia Child/IACP award, she began her remarkable career at the age of 23 as first chef to New York Mayor Ed Koch and later became the youngest female executive chef in the country for Lord & Taylor’s thirty-eight restaurants. As Chef-Director of the renowned hospitality group, Baum + Whiteman, Ms. Gold helped create New York’s magical Rainbow atop Rockefeller Center (where she was co-owner and consulting chef for 15 years), Windows on the World, and three of New York’s three-star restaurants, including the Hudson River Club in 1987 where she helped launch today’s locavore movement.
Rozanne is a graduate of the New School with an MFA in poetry, where she teaches "The Language of Food," exploring the intersection of cuisine and commerce, poetry and prose. Ms. Gold hosts and curates a series of literary events at the Garrison Institute, and was recently named a Board Director of "Brooklyn Poets." Her new podcast, "One Woman Kitchen" (produced by MouthMedia Network), features the inspiring stories of the food world's most remarkable women.

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)

 

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.

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?

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.

 

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

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!