The Best American Poetry

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.”)

Here's to the End of the Week

Come lift up your glasses

and drink what you may,

I'm a man you don't meet every day.

I'm a man you don't meet every day,

every day,

I'm a man you don't meet every day!

The Century Martini: Vive la republique de France a quatorze juillet

 

(art by Hilary Cooper, 2020; clip from Casablanca)

La Marseillaise

Allons, enfants de la patrie,
Le jour de gloire est arrivé.
Contre nous, de la tyrannie,
L’étendard sanglant est levé;
L’étendard sanglant est levé.
Entendez-vous, dans les campagnes
Mugir ces féroces soldats?
Ils viennent jusque dans nos bras
Égorger nos fils, nos compagnes.
Aux armes, citoyens!
Formez vos bataillons,
Marchons, marchons!
Qu’un sang impur
Abreuve nos sillons.

"La Marseillaise" was written in one night, (April 24, 1792) by Claude-Joseph Rouget de Lisle.

"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 the movie version of Butterfield 8 (1960).

"When Miss Rheingold ruled New York City" (Tippi Hedrin was a finalist))

Did Hitchcock vote?

from https://ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com/2009/10/17/new-york-citys-favorite-beauty-contest/

<<< Miss Harlem. Miss subways. Miss Brooklyn. The list of long-gone local beauty contests is filled with small-time titles and pageants. 

But one mattered so much to residents, it reportedly attracted almost as many city voters as a presidential election at the time did: Miss Rheingold.

A promotional jackpot for Brooklyn’s Rheingold Brewing Company, the Miss Rheingold pageant ran from 1941 to 1964. 

Every summer, grocery stores would be stocked with ballots featuring six finalists. The winner spent the following year on Rheingold billboards and in magazine ads. (Tippi Hendren, a 1953 finalist, above, didn’t snag the title.)

Miss Rheingold helped make the beer New York’s most popular in the 1950s and 1960s. Rheingold goes way back in the city; it opened in 1883 in Bushwick on the nabe’s famed “Brewers Row,” which earned its moniker because so many German-American beer companies began there.

Alas, they shut down in 1976, but the brand was revived in the 1990s. A new Miss Rheingold contest was also reinstated recently, but the contestants are all female bartenders. >>>

On Election Day, let us recall election years that really mattered. . .

Yom Kippur, Grand Concourse, Bronx, 1948 [by Stacey Harwood-Lehman]

Renee and Huy Harwood, my parents, eager to end the Yom Kippur fast.

-- sdl

"Ode to My Father’s Manhattans" [by Beth Gylys]

Ode to My Father’s Manhattans

Clink
of ice
in a glass,
crack
of the cubes
as he poured,
bright red
eye
of a maraschino
bobbing
in the brown
gold
slosh
of Jim Beam
and sweet
vermouth.

Surely
we could
swim
in a lifetime
of those drinks,
gallons
upon gallons
swirled, sipped,
swilled
and swallowed,
sticky
on the counter,
the twinkle
of his high.

My father’s
Manhattans
sometimes
made him
want to dance,
to tell
the latest joke.
My shy father
lit
from within
becoming
someone
other
than himself,
sloppy-jolly,
sometimes
standing
(or that
is how
I remember it—
him at the table
standing
(hands
moving
like an Italian
from my mother’s
side of the family),
my father
and the glass
empty
but for
soft stones
of melting ice,
my father
abuzz,
chatty,
full of stories—
then
my father,
spent,
his chin
on his chest.

"I have zest and appetite and I like food!" Mary Astor in "The Big Lie"

-- sdl

An Féar Gorta [Terence Winch]

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

An Féar Gorta

 

If I ever go back home again, we will drive

through the countryside just as it is getting dark.

We will gather together in the town’s only hotel,

eating, and telling jokes at each other’s expense.

 

My heart beats steady there, my spirit alive

to every gesture, every glance, the fire and spark

we find in those we love. Those to whom we tell

our dark secrets along with our idiotic nonsense.

 

Whatever route I take, I always seem to get lost.

I have a tendency to choose the wrong road

to the wrong place. I wind up confused and stranded

wondering if I’ll ever make it home.

 

But I want that ticket back, no matter what the cost.

At An Féar Gorta I want that rhubarb tart a la mode.

I am even willing to stand in the rain, and be reprimanded

for the sorry, soggy state in which I’ve left this poem.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

                                  at An Féar Gorta with cousins Monica (Guthrie) Donovan and Mary Guthrie, Oct. 2013

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

An Féar Gorta is one of my favorite eating establishments in the world. Located in Ballyvaughan, in County Clare, Ireland, where I have many beloved relations, it is a place, as the poem suggests, that I look forward to visiting again. 

I originally thought the term meant "the hungry man," as "fear" is “man” in Irish. But the fada (accent) confused me---instead of "fear," it's "féar," which means “grass.” So, the name translates to "The Hungry Grass," a term going back to the Famine. More information can be found here, here, and here.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

                                      the garden at An Féar Gorta. Photo by T. Winch

Sinatra at the Sands, January 1966 [by David Lehman]

Ed. note: Jack Daniel's produced a limited-batch sour-mash whiskey called "Sinatra Century" to mark the singer's 100th birthday, December 12, 2015. Lehman's book Sinatra's Century: One Hundred Notes on the Man and His World was published by HarperCollins at the same time. An editor at The Wall Street Journal noted the coincidence and commissioned Lehman, who likes good bourbon, to review the new whiskey, which came in a gift box including a thumb drive containing the recording of a Sinatra show at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas in January 1966.

1. The Background

Frank Sinatra discovered Jack Daniel’s one sleepless night in the early 1940s. “It’s been the oil to my engine ever since,” he later said. He famously praised “anything that gets you through the night, be it prayer, tranquilizers or Jack Daniel’s.” Frank always kept a bottle nearby, offstage, and he was buried with a flask of JD in his casket.

In her autobiography, Judith Campbell Exner —the moll who was mistress to both John F. Kennedy and the head of the Chicago mob—recalled a day spent with Sinatra. He “acknowledged the comings and goings of an endless string of visitors, growled at flunkies, drank martinis, ate lunch, drank Jack Daniel’s, ate hors d’oeuvres, drank Jack Daniel’s, ate dinner, and drank more Jack Daniel’s.”

By the mid-1960s, Sinatra could drink a fifth of Jack Daniel’s and still go on stage.

2) The Anticipation

Like any respectable Sinatra aficionado, I have imbibed my share of Tennessee’s trademark sour mash whiskey. And as the author of a new book on Sinatra, I had an extra incentive to try the latest ultra-premium Jack Daniel’s bottle sent to me by my editor at The Wall Street Journal: a limited-edition 100-proof whiskey aged in 100 “alligator-charred” oak barrels (so called for the scaly interior surface left by the fire, the deepest of all the chars whiskey producers use to impart flavor and color to the liquor). It hit shelves in October—in plenty of time for toasts to Frank Sinatra on his 100^th birthday, December 12, 2015.

The whiskey is called Sinatra Century. By serendipitous coincidence, my new book is called “Sinatra’s Century.” I wrote it, quite simply, because I have loved the singer’s voice, his musical savvy, his definitive versions of great standards ever since I heard “All the Way” and “Witchcraft” on the radio when I was eight or nine and grasped the essence of swing from Sinatra albums a few years later. Timing it to coincide with the centennial, I wrote the book in 100 parts, because Sinatra’s career exists in exquisite counterpoint with what Henry Luce called the “American century” and because the century is the perfect form for a subject with so many facets.

Jack Daniel’s already has a top-shelf whiskey with Sinatra’s name on it – 90 proof Sinatra Select, which is selling well, at twice the price of single-barrel bourbons that are just as good. So there was a part of me that wondered whether the same would be true with “Sinatra Century” – whether JD is selling a name, an event, and a future souvenir rather than a whiskey that can go head to head with A. H. Hirsch Reserve or the best of Buffalo Trace’s Antique Collection.

3) The Presentation

The presentation of Sinatra Century is as lavish as it should be, priced at $379 or more per one-liter bottle. It arrives in a deep blue-indigo lacquered carrying case with an engraved brass handle on top. Pop open the case, and the bottle sits in a custom groove, like a dark liquid jewel set against black velvet. Each bottle is numbered—mine is FAS 23095, the initials standing for Francis Albert Sinatra. Also in their own made-to-size grooves are a hardbound booklet devoted to Sinatra’s relationship with Jack Daniel’s and a tie clip that doubles as a thumb drive.

That last item comes loaded with a previously unreleased album of a live Sinatra performance: thirteen songs, two monologues and a coda, all recorded at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas in January 1966. Frank had just turned fifty and was teaming up with the brilliant arranger Quincy Jones backed by the Count Basie Orchestra, and what better way to return to that evening than with a rocks glass in hand?

4) The Proof

           Isn’t “proof” a lovely word? It stands in one context for the potency of a potable, and in another it means verification: a geometrical proof, say, or the proof of the pudding. Both senses come into play here. Would Sinatra Century prove potent enough to provide the perfect accompaniment to belters like “Luck Be a Lady” and “Fly Me to the Moon”? At 100 proof, it had better. (The standard “Old No. 7” Jack Daniel’s bottle clocks in at a mere 80.)

As to color, I said amber, my wife said topaz. I said tongue of flame, my wife said Stradivarius. She described the taste as “warm orange afterglow.” I took another sip and said, “Cognac.” She sipped and said, “The Cognac of bourbons.” Goes well with dark chocolate. Warms the soul “in a drear-nighted December” (to quote Keats).

The whiskey is the best I’ve ever had from Jack Daniel’s.

How to drink it? Neat or with a few ice cubes. We stuck to Sinatra’s own recipe: “three rocks, two fingers, and a splash”–a Sinatra haiku, when you think about it. We omitted the splash.

5. The Playlist

Sinatra Century promises not merely a whiskey but an experience. So you’re sitting in your favorite reclining armchair sipping and playing the recording of that Sands appearance of January 1966. It opens with a trusty icebreaker, “Come Fly with Me,” then turns to a ballad he’s sung since his crooner days, the Gershwins’ “I’ve Got a Crush on You.” Self-consciousness spoils the verse intro. The skinny singer can scarcely keep a straight face when obliged to sing “I’m your big and brave and handsome Romeo.”

He’s on safer ground with Cole Porter’s “I’ve Got You Under My Skin.” Perhaps the most celebrated of all Sinatra’s up-tempo finger-snappers, it brings out his swinging best. In adapting Nelson Riddle’s 1956 arrangement, Quincy Jones makes miraculous use of reeds and muted horns to compensate for the lack of a string section.

Sinatra always maintained he was at heart a saloon singer and he proves it anew in “Street of Dreams” and Matt Dennis’s great, haunting “Angel Eyes.” As you savor another swallow, the pace changes with “Fly Me to the Moon,” a highlight of the night. Sinatra reinvented Bart Howard’s 1954 song: It wasn’t a sad wistful plea, after all, but an assertive proclamation of love. It was also a nod to NASA’s great decade, the conquest of space as a seduction song. Killer arrangement. Love that flute.

The timeless “You Make Me Feel So Young” shows Sinatra at his most buoyant, and then he turns up the warmth in Johnny Mandel’s Oscar-winning “Shadow of Your Smile.” Sinatra is dating Mia Farrow and Mia likes the song.

Frank Loesser’s “Luck Be a Lady” comes from the musical “Guys and Dolls.” In the movie version, Sinatra played Nathan Detroit, but it was Marlon Brando as Sky Masterson who got to sing this ode to gambling that marks the show’s heroic climax. Now, to correct the injustice, Sinatra demonstrates how the song should be sung. One of Sinatra’s anthems in the 1960s, a hymn to Las Vegas, here it’s as electric as “Fly Me to the Moon,” with a tail like that of “My Kind of Town.”

Time for another round.

The audience is hushed when Frank sings “It Was a Very Good Year,” where again the reeds do the work of strings, and then the Rodgers and Hart standard “Where or When,” not only a marvelous love song but also the greatest ever on the subject of déjà vu: “Some things that happen for the first time / Seem to be happening again.”

The nightclub act ends with a song Sinatra owns: “My Kind of Town,” the terrific tribute to Chicago that Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen wrote for their boss to sing in “Robin and the Seven Hoods,” his last movie musical.

By now you’ve made a dent in the bottle and you’re robustly singing along.

-- from  "Author David Lehman Takes On Jack Daniel's Sinatra Century," in The Wall Street Journal, January 5, 2016

The End of Summer--Tutti Frutti Tarts [by Barbara Hamby]

Summer is ending, but the impulse to pile on the fruit is almost irresistible. For Labor Day I made a Lemon Mascarpone tart with a combination of plums, blueberries, raspberries, and cherries. Right away the Italian description "tutti frutti" came to mind. It translates as "all the fruits." I didn't manage to do that, but I did my best. 

A week later for my friend Elizabeth's birthday, I made Patricia Wells' Lemon Lover's Tart, because lemon is her favorite. I've made this tart over and over, but I've never made this Tutti Frutti version. I also wanted to try out my tartlet tins.

The pandemic has made all kinds of obsessions seem less weird. I'm studying French and Italian on Duolingo, talking things over with my little cat Patsy, and all summer I made fruit tarts. Oh, I also wrote a lot of poems. I call that a good summer. Thanks for sharing it with me. -- Barbara Hamby

Summer of Fruit Tarts--The Berries [by Barbara Hamby]

I had a friend in college who when everything was going great would say, "It's the berries!" I knew right away what he meant. Berries are one of nature's most beautiful gifts. When we were hunter-gatherers, berries were there for the picking although now someone else picks them and they show up in little boxes at the market. 

Blueberries, blackberries, raspberries--they are little party favors of the gods, Demeter's joy at Persephone's return. They can be eaten by the handfuls right off the bush, made into jams for winter, or baked into tarts. I wanted to try Tartine's pastry cream with Rose Geranium. I planted two rose geranium plants in my herb garden in the spring to use in a jam recipe, but when I saw the pastry cream recipe, I couldn't help myself. You soak four leaves in two cups of warm milk for a half hour and then make the cream. The rose geranium is a perfect compliment to the blackberries. If you don't have the rose geranium, you can use rose water.

Since I wasn't going to be taken out for dinner on my birthday this year, I decided to make my favorite Ligurian fish stew and end with this lemon mascarpone tart with blueberries, blackberries, pitted cherries, and little sprigs of mint. Happy birthday to me.

 

As summer's bounty is nearing its end, I'm freezing berries in anticipation of berriless days ahead. Berries are a metaphor for the small sweet things in life. In the nearly extinct Tofa language in Siberia, "to go berry picking" is a metaphor for death, which seems very beautiful to me.

Summer of Fruit Tarts--Peach-O-Rama [by Barbara Hamby]

I go a little crazy when peaches are in season, which in North Florida is between the middle of June and the middle of August. We're a 45 minute drive from Georgia, which is the center of the peach universe. The best of the best is the Elberta peach, which is like biting into everything the world promised you but snatched away until the moment when that golden flesh hits your tongue and the juice is running down your arms. Standing over the kitchen sink is the preferred position during the week or so that Elbertas are released by the Peach Gods into the mortal realm. 

After this experience, then I start thinking about how to preserve some of the peaches for the winter. Peach jam is a must. Not only is it good with toast and jam, but if you slice some jalapenos in a jar or two then you can add it to a cheese board. I also make a white-peach saffron confiture, which is a looser French jam. White peach and lemon verbena is also a great combination.

But peaches this beautiful deserve to be put into a tart. I started with a riff on the Patricia Wells' Apricot Almond Tart, substituting peaches for the apricots. It's a divine tart not matter what fruit you use. This is a photo of the tart before it goes into the oven.

https://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/verlets-apricot-tart-101800

The perfection of the Elberta is expressed in all its golden glory! The Wells tart recipe is wonderful, but this year I wanted to try another one--Amanda Hesser's recipe. It is very different from Wells' recipe, but it is wonderful in its own way. The photograph at the beginning of this piece is Hesser's Fresh Peach Tart: https://food52.com/recipes/14217-peach-tart

Another peachy tart that is beautiful and delicious is this white peach tart. The White Peach is in the markets here around the beginning to the middle of August. This tart needs peach jam, and lucky for me I had some fresh jam that I'd made in July. I use the Tartine recipe, which calls for peaches, sugar, and lemon juice. It's a simple perfect recipe.

 The perfume of a white peach is like a whiff of paradise, not the Old Testament one but the land of milk and honey in which everyone is illuminated by an inner light and poetry is on their tongues. This is an Italian recipe, and when I saw it, I knew I had to try it if only to be faithful to my peach-mania.  https://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/white-peach-tart

I'll leave you with this poem from my new book, Holoholo. Even when I'm in the middle of summer with its abundance of peaches, I am thinking of their passing from this world:

 

                        Ode to the Last Peach of Summer

How many summers are left me, fierce afternoons in July

            as I bite into globes of ripe peaches, juice running

down my hands, the aching splendor of their golden flesh,

            some as big as a baby’s head with its fuzz

and tender skin, but always I’m thinking of you, the last peach

            of the year, sometimes in September, one year

on October fifth, and you're a little hard, my sweet nut,

            or mealy, the rough fabric of your meat, its scent

a faint telegraph from August when I’m wallowing

            in so many peaches I bake pies, make peach jam,

some with jalapeños, pour Bellinis, but with every bite

            I get a little closer to you, and November looms

with its desperate peachless days. O pit with crevices

            like the dark side of the moon. Juice exploding

on my tongue. Flesh of your flesh. O to live in a world

            that has peaches, a moment or two in the riot of summer

before rain begins to fall, and in the dark woods mushrooms

            sprout like gold coins in the last grass of the year.

_____

Barbara Hamby was born in New Orleans and raised in Honolulu. She  is the author of seven books of poems, most recently Holoholo: Poems (2121) Bird Odyssey (2018), and On the Street of Divine Love: New and Selected Poems (2014), all  published by the University of Pittsburgh Press, which also published Babel (2004) and All-Night Lingo Tango (2009). Her first book, Delirium, won the Vassar Miller Prize, The Kate Tufts Award, and the Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Award. Her second book, The Alphabet of Desire, won the New York University Press Prize for Poetry and was published in 1999 by New York University Press. She teaches at Florida State University where she is Distinguished University Scholar. You can find out more about Barbara here.  

"We nibbled on it like mice." Novelist Bell Kaufman (May 10, 1911 – July 25, 2014) on her first taste of chocolate.

Bel Kaufman, z"l, granddaughter of Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem and author of award-winning novels (Up the Downstair Case), recalls the food shortages of her childhood in Soviet Ukraine and how her early memories of hunger have made her deeply appreciative of food.

For the full interview, visit the Yiddish Book Center here. 

-- sdl

Summer of Fruit Tarts--Figgissimo [by Barbara Hamby]

The sauna of a Southern summer seems made for figs. When David Kirby and I bought our house, I discovered an old fig tree near the driveway and the vegetable garden. The woman who sold us our house told us her father had had a victory garden there during World War II. Does the fig tree date back to the forties? I wish I'd asked her. 

A fig tree is a glorious creature with large leaves that look like the palms of a giant. I've planted two more trees since we moved in. We had to have a pine tree in the front yard removed, and I'm going to plant another one where the pine was. Early in the fall fig trees begin to loose their leaves, but when they start to leaf out in the spring, their bare brown stems erupt with little rosettes of green, and I know that the figs are on their way.

This summer has been miraculous. I usually make two flats (12-jars per flat) of fig jam. This year I made 36 jars, and two fig tarts.

I'm wondering about the figginess of this summer. Could the drought during May followed by torrential downpours be the reason? Probably not, because this is a pretty typical late spring into early summer. I have to compete with the birds and squirrels for the figs. This year I got all St. Francis of Assisi and addressed the critters. "Brother and sister birds, you take the high figs and I'll take the low ones. Then we'll all live as one. Brother and sister squirrels, I know you're hungry, too. Please take all you want, but please don't take a bite and then go on to the next fig. Let's share the lusciousness."

It seemed to work. Fig jam is one of mother nature's true gifts. Bread, butter, and fig jam with a cup of coffee or tea makes an ambrosial breakfast. With a strong stinky cheese it goes well with an aperitivo. I haven't tried this yet, but I'm going to make a crostata marmalata, the Italian breakfast tart, with fig jam. 

I inherited David's mother's copper jam-making pot, and I cook up two or three batches of jam every summer. Our trees have small brown figs called Brown Turkey, that seem to me more concentrated in flavor than their larger cousins. In my mother-in-law's recipe for fig jam the only ingredients are figs, sugar, and lemons. The most complicated part of making fig jam is fig curation. The season is only a couple of weeks in July. It starts slowly and then builds up speed. On good days I pick a pound in the morning and another pound in the early evening. Every two days I have enough for a batch of jam. But figs are tender little orbs. You have to watch them or they'll turn into mush. 

Since I had so many figs this year, I had plenty for tarts. My first tart was beautiful, but the crust was a disappointment. That's because I tried a crust that wasn't Patricia Wells' crust. The second one was beautiful and balanced. The recipe is from her great book At Home in Provence, which won a James Beard award when it came out in 1996. I was at the Miami Book Fair and saw her demonstrate some of the recipes. The copy I bought is falling apart because I've tried so many of the recipes. The fig tart is a variation on the apricot almond tart. The only change I made was that I substituted orange flower water for the almond extract. This photo is of the halved figs without the cream filling.

I'm hoping to find some purple figs at the market later in the summer, and try the recipe with them. Here's the recipe again: https://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/verlets-apricot-tart-101800

Next week: It's a Peach-luscious world

Summer of Fruit Tarts--Cherry-mania [by Barbara Hamby]

Oh, cherries--how do I love thee? Let me count the ways. You are a small bomb of sweetness that explodes on the tongue like a day in summer. There are so many ways to take advantage of the glorious cherry. First, of course, you eat them raw like candy. I'm teaching a class on the letters of the poets next year, and I'm reading Sylvia Plath's two huge (as in 800 pages plus apiece) volumes of letters. For some reason a bowl of cherries really goes well with a long book. I remember reading War and Peace one summer in my twenties and eating cherries.

I started my Summer of Sylvia Plath with Red Comet, the splendid new biography by Heather Clark. The cherries made those last terrible months of Plath's life easier to read about. Plath loved to cook and eat. Her early letters mention the enormous amount of food she ate at camp. Friends say her metabolism was off the charts. I'd love to make her lemon pie. Maybe later in the year when my lemon trees start bearing fruit.

Back to cherries!

After eating cherries like candy, cherry jam is the next step in my cherry-mania. If you lace the jam with jalapeños, then you will have a marvelous addition to your fall cheese boards. I've also made some cherry jam without the peppers to use when I make a Gateau Basque and a newly discovered Maltese Tart to commemorate the birth of the Virgin, which leads one down a linguistic path on all the uses of the word "cherry." Look for the on September 8, which is the BVM's birthday.

A third use for cherries is Eugenia Bone's divine recipe for cherries preserved in red wine. I usually make three or four pint jars every summer. In the middle of winter it is a great topping for pound cake or a simple olive oil cake. 

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/15896/well-preserved-by-eugenia-bone/9780307885807/excerpt

https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1019986-olive-oil-cake?action=click&module=Global%20Search%20Recipe%20Card&pgType=search&rank=1

Finally, you can make a cherry tart. My go-to tart recipes are from Patricia Wells' book At Home in Provence. This is the easiest recipe ever, and your friends and guests will be wowed. The crust has a cookie-like dough that you press into the tart pan, so you don't need a rolling pin.

Any cherry recipe begins with pitting the cherries. Cherry juice wants to explode all over, so it's best to lay down an old towel on your table. I use gloves, because the juice will stain your nails. Also, investing in a good cherry pitter is essential. You can buy one for less than ten dollars. I have two, so sometimes I can invite a friend to a cherry-pitting party.

After you've baked the tart shell, Wells suggests sprinkling the crust with ground almonds so the crust doesn't get soggy when you put in the cream filling.

Then arrange the cherries starting on the outer edge of the tart shell and work your way toward the center.

Now pour the cream mixture in and top the tart with ground almonds. Wells says that cherries and almonds are a match made in heaven, and I agree with her.

Here's the finished tart:

This is the basic recipe for Wells' tart. However, if you want a full immersion in Wells' world I'd suggest having a copy of her book At Home in Provence. My copy is falling apart with love and use. Patrica Wells is a goddess. 

https://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/verlets-apricot-tart-101800

Happy baking! 

Barbara Hamby is the author of seven books of poems, most recently Holoholo (2021), Bird Odyssey (2018) and On the Street of Divine Love: New and Selected Poems (2014), all published by the University of Pittsburgh Press, which also published Babel (2004) and All-Night Lingo Tango (2009). She was a 2010 Guggenheim fellow in Poetry and her book of short stories, Lester Higata’s 20^th Century, won the 2010 Iowa Short Fiction Award. She has also edited an anthology of poems, Seriously Funny (Georgia, 2009), with her husband David Kirby. She teaches at Florida State University.

Mycology [by Stacey Harwood-Lehman]

 

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photos 2021 (c) Jessica Kerns

This summer we have had so much rain here in the Finger Lakes that mushrooms, both edible and toxic, are popping up everywhere and the hunters are out. Better be careful! Over on Facebook, where friends are posting photos of their fungus finds, polymath Jessica Kerns responded with an emphatic "NO!" when I asked if I could serve up a spectacular mushroom I'd spotted while walking the dog. Elsewhere she notes that "[t]he forests are magical right now. Hunting mushrooms for harvest is therapy." Scroll through her photos, above, and you'll see what she means. "Not all of these are edible," says Jessica, "but two of them are and they are delicious!" Extra credit if you can guess which to saute with butter and garlic and a splash of wine and which belong in an Agatha Christie novel.  

I'm reminded of this poem: 

Mushrooms

        by Sylvia Plath

Overnight, very
Whitely, discreetly,
Very quietly

Our toes, our noses
Take hold on the loam,
Acquire the air.

Nobody sees us,
Stops us, betrays us;
The small grains make room.

Soft fists insist on
Heaving the needles,
The leafy bedding,

Even the paving.
Our hammers, our rams,
Earless and eyeless,

Perfectly voiceless,
Widen the crannies,
Shoulder through holes. We

Diet on water,
On crumbs of shadow,
Bland-mannered, asking

Little or nothing.
So many of us!
So many of us!

We are shelves, we are
Tables, we are meek,
We are edible,

Nudgers and shovers
In spite of ourselves.
Our kind multiplies:

We shall by morning
Inherit the earth.
Our foot's in the door.
>>>

And this passage from The Debt to Pleasure, a favorite contemporary novel by John Lanchester, also comes to mind: 

    On the seat beside me were my wicker basket, my Sherlock Holmesian magnifying glass (hardly ever used or needed), and my copy of Champignons du nos pays by Henri Romagnesi (ditto, though I also keep all six volumes of Champignons du Nord et du Midi by Andre Marchand back at the house).

    In the following account, the alert reader will notice that I am being a little bit coy about the geographical specifics. Forgive me, but we amateur mycologists, especially amateur mycologists of a culinary bent, passionately guard our favored patches of land--a promising batch of cèpes-yielding beeches here, a cropped roadside thronging with ink-caps there, a yonder patch of nettles known to feature spectacular examples of Langermannia gigantea, or the giant puffball, and somewhere else a field with a healthy quantity of cow excrement conducive to the fructation of the nasty tasting but currently popular halucinogen Psilocybe semilanceata, appropriately known in English as the Liberty Cap. (This, by the way, is not as it is sometimes taken to be, the hallucinogen used by the notorious shamans of the Koryk tribe in far Siberia, the Amanita muscaria, or fly agaric, ingestible via reindeer or indeed human urine, most often popularly reproduced in the image of a re-capped white-dotted toadstool, providing a convenient seat for any momentarily resting elf or fairy. The shamans call that mushroom the Wapag, after a body of magical beings who inhabit the fungi with a view to passing on secrets from the realm of the spirits.) We mushroom hunters are a secretive and wary breed, and it is through ingrained force of habit that I confine my account of the site of my labors to the description: a patch of land somewhere in the south of France. . .

Bon Appetit! 

A Summer of Fruit Tarts [by Barbara Hamby]

What says summer more than the gorgeous fruit that descends on the markets? Apricots, berries, peaches, figs, plums, and so much more. I am a dedicated jam maker, so I usually concentrate my efforts there. But I also love to bake. I find it relaxing, especially after a long and especially grueling semester. With graduate admissions, 16 defenses, and two Zoom classes, this was more exhausting than it usually is. I was ready to do some cooking and try to become a human being again.

I subscribe to New York Times Cooking, and a recipe came up that I thought I'd like to try--Gâteau Breton. It was adapted by Melissa Clark. I love her recipes. Her cookbook, Dinner in French, really helped me get through the first part of the pandemic. Sitting down to a civilized dinner seem to keep the chaos at bay. The glasses of wine probably helped, too.

I made the Gâteau Breton. It was delicious. I served it with crème fraîche--ooh, la, la. It looked just like the photo in the NYTimes, not something that always happens. An obsession was born. I thought why not make fruit tarts to take advantage of the summer's bounty. The Gâteau Breton used dried plums and rum, but fresh fruit was already in the markets. I had a couple of good tart recipes, and I wanted to find more.

In his essay "Are You Still Writing About Your Father?" Tony Hoagland says that a poet is lucky to have an obsession. I certainly have my core obsessions, but I also like to cultivate peripheral ones that talk to the big mamas. I never know if they are going to crop up in my work, and sometimes they don't, but as Keats says you have to work in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts. Who knows what will happen? I love that feeling, and nothing is better than a slice of tart with an afternoon cup of tea.

Here's the recipe: https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1017854-gateau-breton

Next tart: Patricia Wells is a baking goddess!

Barbara Hamby was born in New Orleans and raised in Honolulu. She  is the author of seven books of poems, most recently Holoholo: Poems (2121) Bird Odyssey (2018), and On the Street of Divine Love: New and Selected Poems (2014), all  published by the University of Pittsburgh Press, which also published Babel (2004) and All-Night Lingo Tango (2009). Her first book, Delirium, won the Vassar Miller Prize, The Kate Tufts Award, and the Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Award. Her second book, The Alphabet of Desire, won the New York University Press Prize for Poetry and was published in 1999 by New York University Press. She teaches at Florida State University where she is Distinguished University Scholar. You can find out more about Barbara here. 

An Interview with Adrienne Su [by Aspen Matis]

Adrienne Su is the author of five acclaimed poetry collections: Peach State, Living Quarters, Having None of It, Sanctuary, and Middle Kingdom. Her poems appear in many anthologies, including four volumes of The Best American Poetry. A recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, she is professor of creative writing and poet-in-residence at Dickinson College.

I corresponded with Ms. Su via email about poetry’s ability to translate “a question or problem into comprehensible form” and to “make our everyday vocabulary do something no one previously thought it could.” We also discussed the exciting nature of creative works that elicit “a gut response, an understanding one feels rather than thinks” and the power of strong and timely language to make “a constructive difference” in our world.

What is poetry’s greatest role in your inner life? Why do you write poems?

Writing poems is the most difficult and original thing I’m capable of doing. It uses all of my intellectual resources, as well as whatever small abilities I might possess in music, visual art, storytelling, and the many languages I’ve studied but can’t speak. Also, I find that writing a poem reduces the pain of nagging uncertainties, not by providing certainties, but by putting a question or problem into comprehensible form.

What is the most radical thing a poet can do in his or her work?

First, to make our everyday vocabulary do something no one previously thought it could. Usually this has something to do with the roots of words, the root of “radical” being radix, “root.” Second, to keep at poetry regardless of the recognition that does or doesn’t appear in the poet’s lifetime.

This past March, you wrote a powerful and wrenching opinion-editorial in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution about how “As the pandemic raged and many in power blamed China for everything, attacks on Asians followed.” In the context of the horrific racially-motivated Atlanta mass-shooting of Asian women, your essay shares a glimpse of your own experience as an Asian American woman from Atlanta. Relaying the ways in which you’ve navigated the rise in hostility and discrimination you’ve experienced in the past months, you write: “My job is safer than the jobs of spa employees, but I see anew how I coped with the pandemic under an openly racist president. When gyms closed and many took to walking for exercise, I cut back on going outside. After dark, I drove, even to travel two blocks. I appreciated the obscuring effect of masks.” What moved you to write this very personal op-ed, and what impact do you hope your words will have?

Thank you for this response to the piece. I wrote it because the news of the shooting left me feeling pinned by a boulder, and my initial efforts to roll it away — donating money, attending a rally — gave no relief. The boulder didn’t budge. Its weight was saying that I was not only capable of more, the task was also non-optional. Jennifer Joseph of Manic D Press, publisher of three of my books, gave me the needed nudge. As an Asian American writer who not only grew up in Atlanta but was one week from publishing a book of poems centering on Asian American Atlanta, I would be wrong not to speak up — and I needed to do it in a genre that moves faster and is more widely read than poetry. How long would the media be interested in Asian America? One, two weeks? If enough writers took up the cause, that interest could last longer. Strong op-eds by other Asian American writers were appearing by the day, so I also knew I needed to say something others hadn’t already said. In terms of speed, I’m the opposite of a journalist, so even with Jen and other writer friends responding to drafts, and with every obligation I could cancel canceled, that short piece took me four full days of obsessive writing and rewriting. My hope is that it conveys something others may have wanted to say about being Asian American in a time of pandemic and racial unrest but didn’t have the writing experience, access to publishing, or possibly even the English language to express — and that that makes a constructive difference, on any scale.

Your most recent book of poems, Peach State, explores Atlanta, Georgia’s transformation from the mid-twentieth century to today, as seen and shaped by Chinese Americans. Poet Mark Jarman describes the collection as “elegant, lucid, formally inventive,” and Paisley Rekdal, who edited The Best American Poetry 2020, calls the book “sly, smart and accessible, formally sophisticated and moving,” adding that Peach State is “a beautiful and thought-provoking meditation on food, race, and identity.” What would you like to share about the origins, creation process, and ambitions of this newest collection?

In 2015 I saw how international Atlanta had become; being of Asian descent there was no longer the lonely condition I remembered from the 1970s. Both of these things had become clear to me through food: restaurants, grocery stores. In the early days, my family had simply done without many Chinese ingredients, but every now and then someone arrived with a suitcase full of treasures from New York, San Francisco, Taiwan, or Singapore. Today I’m the one who brings a suitcase full of treasures home to central Pennsylvania — from Atlanta. I wanted to write about these changes because, while Atlanta’s transformation was what I had wanted all along, it also meant the erasure of an era. I wanted to acknowledge and celebrate the Chinese Americans, including my parents, who were there many years before the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 inadvertently created major demographic shifts. I found that I was best able to portray their resourcefulness, creativity, loneliness, and joy through food. They laid a path for the substantial Asian population of today’s Atlanta — which I also wanted to celebrate. The writing process was a mixture of mourning and delight.

Do the best books win the poetry prizes? Why do great works so often fall through the cracks of our literary foundation, into obscurity?

When I look at shortlists, even longlists, for prizes, I think there is no “best” book. The books are usually doing different things and aren’t meant to be compared to each other. That’s why I think it’s so important that independent publishers and university presses stay around; they care most about the integrity of the work, and while they certainly need to sell books, they aren’t in it for the immediate public response. One day the overlooked great works may receive the recognition they deserve because someone kept them in print. Best American Poetry is a great vehicle for that, too, putting both known and unknown poets’ names in public libraries everywhere.

Do you have any wisdom or guidance you’d like to share with young poets?

Have faith that your non-literary talents will turn out to be relevant to your poetry, but give it time to find its place. For many years, I was ambivalent about my interest in cooking. Cooking ability often translates into added labor, especially for women — labor that is generally unseen and repetitive and done at the cumulative expense of writing time. Eventually, my interest in food became a cornerstone of my writing life.

What are you working on now? What creative pursuits most excite you, today?

Lately I’ve been writing prose, including a forthcoming piece on children’s books for New Ohio Review; a short piece for the Instagram page Apparel for Authors; and another short piece on Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month for USA Today. I’m working on a longer essay on Chinese restaurants. Poetry is still my main genre, but this moment in history seems also to be calling for prose. As when I first read poems that moved me, I remain the most excited by creative works that elicit a visceral response; I wish I could generalize about what constitutes such works, but it’s a gut response, an understanding one feels rather than thinks.  

M. F. K. Fisher on the Martini

 

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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)

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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 olive juice. 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. For an American gin, try Barr Hill (Vermont) and for an expensive upgrade on the vermouth, consider Dolon's.  -- DL