Category Archives: poetry

Existing in the middle is best.

food and cooking, poetry

THURSDAY

Because the most difficult part about making something, also the best,
Is existing in the middle,
Sustaining an act of radical imagination,
I simmered a broth: onion, lemon, a big handful of mint.

The phone rang. So with my left
Hand I answered it,
Sautéing the rice, then adding the broth
Slowly, one ladle at a time, with my right. What’s up?

The miracle of risotto, it’s easy to miss, is the moment when the husks dissolve,
Each grain of rice releasing its tiny explosion of starch.

If you take it off the heat just then, let it sit
While you shave the parmesan into paper-thin curls,
It will be perfectly creamy,
But will still have a bite.

There will be dishes to do,
The moon will rise,
And everyone you love will be safe.

-James Longenbach

 

 

Notable birthdays of May 29th.

culture, history, poetry, , , , , , ,

I frequently look in on Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac, but rarely do I find every item from his column interesting, as I did today. Today is a reprint of what was in the column in 2017. Of course, it being the birthday of G.K. Chesterton, I wanted to read what Keillor might say about that favorite writer of mine. But Bob Hope and Oswald Spengler were also born on the 29th of May. Spengler studied the history of civilizations, and published the book The Decline of the West in 1918.

A quote from Christopher Hitchens is included in this piece, which I found quite a contrast to the legacies of the other three men; it made me feel sorry for him.

Keillor leads off with the poem, “A Dream of the Future,” by Joyce Sutphen, which I think ties in nicely with the subject of Spengler’s thesis about the “blossoming and withering” of cultures over time.

If any of this piques your interest, check out The Writer’s Almanac.

Back in the dark before I remember.

nature, poetry, time, , , ,

JUST THIS

When I think of the patience I have had
back in the dark before I remember
or knew it was night until the light came
all at once at the speed it was born to
with all the time in the world to fly through
not concerned about every arriving
and then the gathering of the first stars
unhurried in their flowering spaces
and far into the story the planets
cooling slowly and the ages of rain
then the seas starting to bear memory
the gaze of the first cell at its waking
how did this haste begin this little time
at any time this reading by lightning
scarcely a word this nothing this heaven

–W.S. Merwin, from The Shadow of Sirius 2008

by Henri-Edmond Cross