Category: Literature

Food Poem- In a Kitchen Where Mushrooms Were Washed (Jane Hirshfield)

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In a kitchen where mushrooms were washed,

the mushroom scent lingers.

As the sea must keep for a long time the scent of the whale.

As a person who’s once loved completely,
a country once conquered,
does not release that stunned knowledge.

They must want to be found, those strange-shaped, rising morels,
clownish puffballs.

Lichens have served as a lamp-wick.
Clean-burning coconuts, olives.
Dried salmon, sheep fat, a carcass of petrel set blazing:
light that is fume and abradement.

Unburnable mushrooms are other.
They darken the air they come into.

Theirs the scent of having been traveled, been taken.

“In A Kitchen Where Mushrooms Were Washed” by Jane Hirshfield from The Beauty. © Knopf, 2015. From the Writer’s Almanac, May 29th.  http://writersalmanac.org/page/5/

Can a writer, cook?

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I have long struggled with the supposed duality of thinkers-doers, theory-practice, architect-builder, foodwriter-cook, design historian-designer. I was relieved by object-oriented radical philosopher Ian Bogost’s call for hybrid practitioners: the philosopher-chef, the philosopher-astronomer and the philosopher-mechanic. I am further soothed by Bill Buford’s 2006 Heat. Yes, I writer can cook and vice versa. There is hope for me yet.

Rave reviews of his book include terms like “dirty realism” and my favorite “existential journalism.” His brand of immersed journalism combines personal fascination (obsession) with in-depth social research. I suppose I feel the same awe about him as he felt following the energetic Mario Batali.

Here are four lessons I’ve learned from Heat:

1. In the kitchen as in life the space we take up is precious and worth defending.

  “I was accepted “inside” on a trial basis. “The question is of space,” Mario said. “Is there room for another body?” There wasn’t. There wasn’t room for the people already there. But somehow I squeezed in.”

“In the afternoon, if you can get a perch in the kitchen, you don’t leave it. You don’t answer the phone, run an errand, make a cup of coffee, have a pee, because if you do you’ll lose your space.”

2. Repetition is the key to mastery.

“One day I was given a hundred and fifty lamb tongues. I had never held a lamb’s tongue, which I found greasy and unnervingly humanlike. But after cooking, trimming, peeling, and slicing a hundred and fifty lamb tongues, I was an expert.”

3. Pressure helps develop (kitchen) awareness.   

“ You’ll learn the reality of restaurant kitchen. As a home cook, you can prepare anything any way anytime. It doesn’t matter if your lamb is rare for your friends on Saturday and not so rare when they come back next year. Here people want exactly what they had last time. Consistency under pressure. And that the reality: a lot of pressure.” He (Mario) thought for a moment. “You also develop an expanded kitchen awareness. You’ll discover how to use your senses. You’ll find you no longer rely on what your watch says. You’ll hear when something is cooked. You’ll smell degrees of doneness.”

4. The need to learn is a compulsion. Just give in.

“I found myself needing to understand short ribs…..”

“I needed to learn pasta.”

“ I was now preoccupied by the question of when, in the long history of food on the Italian peninsula, cooks started putting eggs in their pasta dough. Was this a reasonable concern? Of course not.”

So, learning from Bill Buford, I’ll take up and defend space, repeat until mastery, embrace pressure and give in to my need to understand cooking and how we eat both in the kitchen and in front of my laptop.

Looking for Differences by Tom Hennen

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I am struck by the otherness of things rather than their same-
ness. The way a tiny pile of snow perches in the crook of a
branch in the tall pine, away by itself, high enough not to be
noticed by people, out of reach of stray dogs. It leans against
the scaly pine bark, busy at some existence that does not
need me.

It is the differences of objects that I love, that lift me toward
the rest of the universe, that amaze me. That each thing on
earth has its own soul, its own life, that each tree, each clod is
filled with the mud of its own star. I watch where I step and see
that the fallen leaf, old broken grass, an icy stone are placed in
exactly the right spot on the earth, carefully, royalty in their
own country.

“Looking for the Differences” by Tom Hennen from Darkness Sticks to Everything. © Copper Canyon Press, 2013. Reprinted with permission.

From the Writers Almanac on April 17th, 2015, http://writersalmanac.org/

This poem, a wonderful example of object oriented thinking, does not directly address food. But it does remind me of the respected “royalty” of each ingredient.

Consuming Desire – Poem by Katrina Vandenberg

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I’m not making this up. In Cafe Latte’s wine bar
one of the lovely coeds at the next table
touched John on the arm as if I wasn’t there
and said, Excuse me, sir, but what
is that naughty little dessert?
And I knew from the way he glanced
at the frothy neckline of her blouse,
then immediately cast his eyes on his plate
before giving a fatherly answer,
he would have given up dessert three months
for the chance to feed this one to her.
I was stunned; John was hopeful;
but the girl was hitting on his cake.
Though she told her friend until they left
she did not want any. I wish she wanted
something—my husband, his cake, both at once.
I wish she left insisting
upon the beauty of his hands, his curls,
the sublimeness of strawberries
and angel food. But she was precocious,
and I fear adulthood is the discipline
of being above desire, cultivated
after years of learning what you want
and where and how, after insisting
that you will one day have it. I don’t
ever want to stop noticing a man like the one
at the bar in his loosened tie, reading
the Star Tribune. I don’t want to eat my cake
with a baby spoon to force small bites,
as women’s magazines suggest. And you
don’t want to either, do you? You want a big piece
of this world. You would love to have the whole thing.

“Consuming Desire” by Katrina Vandenberg from Atlas (Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 2004). Copyright © 2004 by Katrina Vandenberg. Reprinted with permission from Milkweed Editions.

From the Writers Almanac March 15, 2015 http://writersalmanac.org/page/23/

Chocolates by Louis Simpson (Poem from Writer’s Almanac)

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Once some people were visiting Chekhov.
While they made remarks about his genius
the Master fidgeted. Finally
he said, “Do you like chocolates?”

They were astonished, and silent.
He repeated the question,
whereupon one lady plucked up her courage
and murmured shyly, “Yes.”

“Tell me,” he said, leaning forward,
light glinting from his spectacles,
“what kind? The light, sweet chocolate
or the dark, bitter kind?”

The conversation became general.
They spoke of cherry centers,
of almonds and Brazil nuts.
Losing their inhibitions
they interrupted one another.
For people may not know what they think
about politics in the Balkans,
or the vexed question of men and women,

but everyone has a definite opinion
about the flavor of shredded coconut.
Finally someone spoke of chocolates filled with liqueur,
and everyone, even the author of Uncle Vanya,
was at a loss for words.

As they were leaving he stood by the door
and took their hands.
In the coach returning to Petersburg
they agreed that it had been a most
unusual conversation.

“Chocolates” by Louis Simpson from Collected Poems. © Paragon House, 1988. Reprinted with permission.

I started posting these poems as a way to include them in this collection of food, design and philosophy related thoughts. At this point there is quite a collection of poems. I’m struck by the diversity of emotions that food images conjure up. This poem perhaps shows that social and conversational connection of taste that brings us to share in each others thoughts online and in person best. Food talk is “most unusual” maybe because there is no prescribed method or sequence, no ultimate objective standard. If I say I don’t like the taste of macadamia nuts, there can only be explanation but no argument, opinions but no facts. I can say I don’t like them unless baked in white chocolate cookies. You don’t have to agree with me but you can’t disagree with my taste either. Fascinating don’t you think?

Thank you, Writer’s Almanac for sharing these poetic food moments.

from http://writersalmanac.org/

Really Eternal City (Poem by George Bilgere)

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After we’d walked for at least an hour,
heading toward the Vatican
on a broiling August day,
I began thinking about how long
the tour we’d signed up for was going to be,
and how many sacred things would be on view,
and how much complicated information
the guide would tell us about the ancient paintings
and Roman numerals and relics
and tombs and holy knuckle bones.

I knew it would all kind of just melt together
and congeal into one big lumpen mass
of guilt and suffering and miracles
and gloomy old men in sandals.

And as I was thinking this
we were passing through a shady little square
where a couple of bare-breasted marble nymphs
were playing in the fountain,
and there were no tour guides anywhere,
there was no suffering or crucifixions,
nor was there even one important name or date
I would have to try to remember.

And the cheap red wine at the sidewalk ristorante
where we ended up spending the afternoon
instead of going to the Vatican
was wonderful, even miraculous,
as was the spaghetti bolognese.

“Really Eternal City” by George Bilgere. © George Bilgere.

From the Writers Almanac, http://writersalmanac.org/page/5/

A Drink of Water by Jeffrey Harrison

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When my nineteen-year-old son turns on the kitchen tap
and leans down over the sink and tilts his head sideways
to drink directly from the stream of cool water,
I think of my older brother, now almost ten years gone,
who used to do the same thing at that age;

and when he lifts his head back up and, satisfied,
wipes the water dripping from his cheek
with his shirtsleeve, it’s the same casual gesture
my brother used to make; and I don’t tell him
to use a glass, the way our father told my brother,

because I like remembering my brother
when he was young, decades before anything
went wrong, and I like the way my son
becomes a little more my brother for a moment
through this small habit born of a simple need,

which, natural and unprompted, ties them together
across the bounds of death, and across time …
as if the clear stream flowed between two worlds
and entered this one through the kitchen faucet,
my son and brother drinking the same water.

“A Drink of Water” by Jeffrey Harrison, from Into Daylight. © Tupelo Press, 2014. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

Posted from the http://writersalmanac.org/

Coffee in the Afternoon (A Poem by Alberto Rios)

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It was afternoon tea, with tea foods spread out
Like in the books, except that it was coffee.

She made a tin pot of cowboy coffee, from memory,
That’s what we used to call it, she said, cowboy coffee.

The grounds she pinched up in her hands, not a spoon,
And the fire on the stove she made from a match.

I sat with her and talked, but the talk was like the tea food,
A little of this and something from the other plate as well,

Always with a napkin and a thank-you. We sat and visited
And I watched her smoke cigarettes

Until the afternoon light was funny in the room,
And then we said our good-byes. The visit was liniment,

The way the tea was coffee, a confusion plain and nice,
A balm for the nerves of two people living in the world,

A balm in the tenor of its language, which spoke through
our hands
In the small lifting of our cups and our cakes to our lips.

It was simplicity, and held only what it needed.
It was a gentle visit, and I did not see her again.

“Coffee in the Afternoon” by Alberto Rios from The Theater of Night. © Copper Canyon Press, 2007. Reprinted with permission.  From The Writers Almanac, http://writersalmanac.org/

Baking – Poem

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On Approaching Seventy

by Joan Seliger Sidney

Watching the hands of my son
kneading challah dough
on the maple cutting board
in my kitchen, a memory

rises of my mother
bending over our kitchen table
in Flatbush, pressing, stretching,
folding flour, water, eggs

into a living elastic.
Sometimes in my dreams, Mom
appears, whispers of her mother
in her kitchen in Zurawno

in the pre-dawn dark,
by the light of the kerosene
lamp, pulling and pushing
the yeasty challah dough

until my son covers it
with a clean white cloth
and leaves it in the warm
electric oven to rise.

“On Approaching Seventy” by Joan Seliger Sidney from Bereft and Blessed. © Antrim House Press, 2014. Reprinted with permission.  (buy now)

http://writersalmanac.org/page/2/

Apple Crisp and Ice cream Happiness

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Happiness

by Wesley McNair

Why, Dot asks, stuck in the back
seat of her sister’s two-door, her freckled hand
feeling the roof for the right spot
to pull her wide self up onto her left,
the unarthritic, ankle—why
does her sister, coaching outside on her cane,
have to make her laugh so, she flops
back just as she was, though now
looking wistfully out through the restaurant
reflected in her back window, she seems bigger,
and couldn’t possibly mean we should go
ahead in without her, she’ll be all right, and so
when you finally place the pillow behind her back
and lift her right out into the sunshine,
all four of us are happy, none more
than she, who straightens the blossoms
on her blouse, says how nice it is to get out
once in a while, and then goes in to eat
with the greatest delicacy ( oh
I could never finish all that) and aplomb
the complete roast beef dinner with apple crisp
and ice cream, just a small scoop.

“Happiness” by Wesley McNair from The Town of No and My Brother Running. © David R. Godine, 1998. Reprinted with permission.   (buy now)

from the writersalmanac.org