Straight Outta Athens, GA

In today's mail: number 2 of Skein, Seth Parker's gorgeous handmade poetry journal.

Really really GOOD poems by Sarah Vap, Danielle Pafunda, Joshua Edwards, Natalie Lyalin, yours truly, and many others.

There's a cute bird on the front cover. The Canary has never had a bird on the cover, despite our namesake.

Seth--where can we get extra copies?

Ronald Johnson

From the dustjacket blurb to The American Table (1984):

"Ronald Johnson was born in Kansas and received his bachelor's degree from Columbia University. He has had several books of poetry publshed by North Point Press, and his first cookbook, Southwestern Cooking New & Old, now in its eighth printing, is considered the definitive classic on the subject. In 1976 he opened his own restaurant, and he presently cooks at one of the most successful caterers in San Francisco."

RJ didn't use tomatoes in his red chile, which here appears as "red chili sauce."

Done

I finished the prospectus. Woo! Karen, my advisor and committee chair, will undoubtedly ask for revisions in the two weeks between now and when it's officially due, but I can handle that. The important thing is that it's more or less done, and I will, by the end of the term, be officially advanced to candidacy, which means, among other things, a pay raise.

Hell yeah.

Like Shanna Compton, I am a lover of good writing about food, and I pick up Gastronomica as often as I can. I didn't know there was a Jacques Pepin love poem by Ms. Compton in said journal, though. Kick ass.

*

I am Spain and The Sound and the Fury. Yesterday I was Les Miserables. I don't remember what question I answered differently. In any case, I was really really sure I'd end up Prufrock, but I don't love the British Isles. Don't hate 'em, either...

*

Once again, in case you missed it the first time: SOMEBODY PUBLISH .NICK'S BOOK

*

A bunch of new cookbooks this week. Kamolmal's Thai showed up, courtesy of ABE. I also picked up some remaindered or otherwise marked down books at the UO Bookstore. Mark Miller's Coyote Cafe Cookbook (surprise! he puts tomatoes in his red chile sauce!!!), and two others unremarkable enough that I have nothing to say about them. Paging through Kamolmal was a treat though--I could really really go for some Son-In-Law Eggs right now.

Shit From an Old Notebook

I spent the afternoon going through my grad school files: an old, huge cardboard box containing pretty much everything I've written, read, copied, or taught over the past four years or so. Now that it's time to write the dissertation, I've decided to clean things up.

Anyway, I found the following in a notebook, dated "Tue 5/16/00"--at this time I was teaching an intro creative writing workshop. I believe the title of the free-write below (though not that free, as I managed to put it into lines) is cribbed from a Dean Young poem.

Don't Wear That Shirt With Those Pants

And mother snatched a velvet
covering from the China hutch,
recited 15 ways to make a sauce
from only chiles, vinegar and pain

and walked out back to check
on the ungodly proclivities
of her son. "It really pains
me to see you like this, Tony,

probably on dope, and have you
looked for work today? Here, take
this dollar--go buy me some
vinegar." Tony snatched the bill

away and wandered down the alley
where Tommyknocker waited
in a copse of cardboard boxes.
And at the store, they bought a bottle,

returned to Mom and sang a dusty song
about some revolutionaries and their
not-quite-natural relationship with a
flock of grackles. Mother frowned

and roasted chiles, then pounded
them to a paste, recited 50 ways
to leave your lover, but only
made it up to "Slip out the back,"

before she noticed Tony's not-
being-there. The sauce had
extra staining power that night
and was as hot as, well--something

very hot. After dinner, Tony
smoked a joint w/ Tommyknocker
and wrote a song about cashews
called "The color of my favorite nut."

Mother wasn't pleased as she put
creases in her wicked son's
favorite khaki pants. "Here, get
dressed," she screamed. "And for

God's sake don't wear those loafers--
who knows what the neighbors might
think! now here, go get a bottle
of wine--Father O'Brien is [drinking]

with us tonight. No profanity. Jesus
loves you. Tuck in your shirt.
Wash your face. And try to smile
for a change. Put away that damn guitar.

Poetry: Who Needs It?

I was having a discussion in the computer room of the English Department the other day with another grad student working in American Poetry who mentioned that he and some others had started a contemporary poetry reading group. What contemporary poets were they reading?

[Drumroll]

Seamus Heaney and Richard Wilbur.


Why do so many folks--these are poetry people working on PhDs in American poetry--not read contemporary poetry? I can't imagine one of the Film Studies students not watching new films...or science folks not reading scientific journals...

So I'm going to join the group. We'll be reading Gabriel Gudding soon. I gave the fellow from the computer room a copy of "Fons Belli" and Gabe's essay, "Dung in an Age of Empire."

Shakin' things up. Sorta.

Menu Consulting & Stuff

I've been thinking lately that most Thai (and other--but mainly Thai) restaurants need a menu consultant. What a great job for a logophile gourmand! Then it occurred to me that if Thai restaurants reworked their menus it might be difficult to tell whether or not the food was worth eating. Robinson's Law of Thai Menus stipulates that the more inscrutable the menu is, the better the food. Conversely, legible, correctly-spelled menus with appealing-sounding dishes tend to be one marker of a poor/bland/tasteless Thai eating experience. Why is that?

I ate at the new place again the other night (a "pretty" Thai restaurant with a "clean" menu). The beef salad was passable. Beef slightly overcooked. Dressing, notably, contained lemon juice instead of lime (big mistake) and the heat level was barely perceptible, despite the three stars magic-markered onto my take-out box. So, once again, the food was fairly tasty, but not particularly "authentic." (As if I know what this means, having never been to Thailand.)

My idea of authenticity in Thai comes from my own explorations in Thai cooking (begun in 1992 or so, and continued intermittently throughout the years). I was living in San Diego in '92 and I used to eat the gai yang at Saffron regularly. Although I hear Saffron is now a full-service, sit-down joint, a dozen years or so ago, it was mainly a take-out stand serving barbecued chicken with a full complement of dipping sauces, sticky rice, and the occasional salad or spring roll (these ancillary items were rotated regularly). I prepared my own Thai dishes using Thai Home Cooking From Kamolmal's Kitchen, which I just-this-instant ordered from ABE. I lent my copy to a friend years ago. The friend moved.

Memorial Day 2002

Absent not kissed how much you differ from
my earlier work. These anniversaries
glut: push: disappear where clouds ain’t floating.
They closed the coffee shop with us still in it.
Seven types of anxiety, clutter, fumble—
Later poems and much later poems and four
kinds of “not”                 Does Iowa look like Oregon or away?
You can’t rework that thing no more: it’s done.

Months later: the poems of Donne, no more, you.
Smiling we swallowed the packets           sugar?
Not kissed, unsolved, not absolved. Our sins make
fools of our circle, our love. October
leavetaking and a sonnet about Milton and bacon,
the breakfast food not the enlightenment man.

Broccoli Again

I "met" my last girlfriend on Valentine's Day. I was doing a classroom observation. I made a quick exit at the end of class, as she was quickly surrounded by needy students.

Later, in my box was a homemade watercolored Valentine, featuring a roughly heart-shaped bouquet of broccoli. This anti-Valentine was distributed to everyone in the department, so I thought nothing of it until I noticed the personalized message on the back--something about leaving the classroom too soon and missing out on a kiss. I was intrigued but not convinced. A couple weeks later we were dating. The following Valentine's day, I think we were both working. I recall nothing even vaguely romantic about it.

Do I have to mention that by the next February 14th we were broken up? I didn't think so. The beginning of our week-or-so break-up process occurred over Chinese food--an argument about money.

I'm reminded of the Maggie Nelson poem, "A Misunderstanding."
I too intend to buy "as much beer as five dollars will buy and drink it right here on the sofa."

The one thing I've shared with all my former lovers is a consuming passion for food. And cooking. And eating. Mostly eating.

Broccoli

"I hate broccoli more than George Bush."

Parse this sentence.

Notes Toward an Obese Fiction

Last night I indulged in a childhood favorite: the bacon sandwich.

Essentially a BLT without the L and T, the "B" or B&M (bacon and mayonnaise) is a perfect mix of fat, fat, and dry bread. I hadn't eaten one of these in, oh, at least fifteen years when it occurred to me in my late night fit of hunger that I had the three necessary ingredients on hand: soft white characterless sandwich bread, thin supermarket bacon, and fake mayonnaise, by which I mean NOT what the East Coasters call "Hellman's" and what the rest of us call "Best Foods." I mean what in my youth used to be called "Imitation Mayonnaise" until marketing folks in the health-conscious 90s decided they could move more units by calling it "Light Mayonnaise." No matter--same product. Best Foods/Hellman's does make a version (and it was lauded by America's Test Kitchen) but for my money, Nalley's Light is the way to go. Less greasy than real mayo and more tangy (but not annoyingly so, like Miracle Whip), it provides the perfect hint of moisture to a sandwich composed of two parts crunchy/crispy. The slight vinegar tang helps to cut the fat bacon mouthfeel as well.

Since I almost never have fresh produce on hand (I dash to the Farmer's Market or Safeway when I need something--I try not to abuse my fruits and veggies by allowing them to perish in my unevenly cool fridge), this is the perfect spur-of-the-moment snack. Friday at midnight is not the time to be running to the greengrocer, in any case.

And I always have bacon on hand. But never eggs.

The composition of the sandwich is quite simple. Toast the bread, slather with fake mayo, and top with a few slices of crispy bacon. The microwave is helpful here.

It was delicious. And I won't have another for at least a few weeks.

Also good is the PBB--Peanut Butter and Bacon. I used to love these things as a kid. As an adult, I've noticed that the rather aggressive tastes of peanut and bacon tend to fight each other. If you use a sweeter peanut butter and a very smoky bacon, a flavor balance can be achieved. But bland salty bacon and bland salty peanut butter make a bland salty sandwich. It's worth a try though, if you're a PBB virgin.


Today then, I had a pork roast sandwich. Same formula--white bread, fake mayo, pork roast. The roast is much leaner than the belly bacon. It also is over-seasoned with fennel. I'll go lighter on the fennel next time.

Tonight's repast will be whatever I can cobble together from the take-out boxes on the top shelf. I've got two boxes of Thai and three of Chinese. And some Korean ramen.

Friday Night Dinner

New Thai joint: Manola.

Service: slow slow slow. The waiter offered me a free dessert of coconut ice cream. I politely declined.

Springrolls--bland. Cabbage & bean-thread noodles. Not much else. Served with an over-sweet plum sauce and a peanut sauce that lacked depth. Peanuts, yes, coconut milk, yes, but I was unable to detect the richness that comes from roasted chiles, fish sauce and tamarind, among other things.

Grapefruit Salad--Really a chicken/cabbage salad with sections of not grapefruit, but mandarin orange. Tasty, but not particularly Thai-tasting. It's as if they've made a conscious effort to omit all the "funky" ingredients that separate Thai food from other Asian cuisines and pseudo-cuisines. I believe Manola has invented a particularly pretty but bland brand of pseudo-Thai, eschewing such things as fish sauce, chiles, and so forth.

Grade: C

I'll go back. The restaurant had only been open for 3 days. I was disappointed, but full.

Breakfast

Pixies: "La La Love You."

One triple Americano in a biodegradable paper cup. One-half hunk of stale lemon-poppyseed poundcake.

Two dozen close readings of Shakespeare's sonnet 84.

In whose confine immured is the store that can produce such...such...
Or, why do I spend my Valentine's Saturday morning and afternoon in such a manner?

Rust never sleeps.

Our United States

Chris Hoppes, furniture salesman, childhood friend, and local Alexis DeTocqueville, has sent along this note. I should mention that it was a private email in response to the blog--I've asked his permission to reprint it here. Hoppes' opinions are not necessarily my own.

+ + +

Sorry you had to go to St. Louis. I know it sucks. I
was born there. That was 1968. It sucked then. It
sucks now. However, they have much more experience in
sucking now than they did when I was living there.

My travels this past year have taught me several
things.

1) New York City rocks. The people there are
friendly, which came to me as a shock, but its true.
Great town, great people.

2) Philadelphia is a dirty, smelly scumhole.

3) People in Boston are mean and suffer from an
inferiority complex. The origin of this complex
eludes me.

4) People in Atlanta are desperate to convince the
rest of the country that their city is a place of
culture, filled with educated and urbane people. It
is not, and they are not.

5) If you're white and live in Mississippi, chances
are you're racist. If you're black and live in
Mississippi, chances are you're poor.

6) Every function in Chicago revolves around food.
If you're working, playing, vacationing, chances are,
you end up or start off in an eatery. This is why I
love Chicago.

7) I've been on roughly 200 flights since 9/11. It's
very easy to spot casual flyers in airports these
days. They're the idiots causing a ruckus in the
security checkpoints. The rest of us business
travelers who have to be in airports on a regular
basis want to see them killed.

Songs for Sanity

I was born in a silly basket,
my daddy’s breadbox greater and more silent than Clara Bow.

I was a traveler and a science-fiction ideologue chomping
at a fair fair franchised piece o’ bitsy.

I was a San Francisco purple flounder
given to tantrums and poshlost, cancer and jaunts to Soho.

*

This boat of clay has spun on Tuesday’s tide:
my brother’s name is Outrigger.

Thinking about what a friend had said and hoping
that bastard would fry.

Jose Jones bought the film rights and your action is
affably laughable, motherfucker.

*

i love the spring. fits and the poor mutts, the early crack
of baseball bats and sewer rats shooting smack and creamy

mice rack, out back. australia’s lack of silly string may bring
lord of the dance, lady of the diamond ring. she’s stacked.

i washed my back with irish spring. when i was black, i smacked
of bling. adjust the tracking to avoid attacking aesofetida (hing).

fancy put her kelly in my stomach, in my sack. save up some
sperms from last week’s nasdaq. grab a sandwich, blow, then hack.

*

Pappy was a lonely grifter, adrift on a sea of sprezzatura.
I met my wife long after the mist—Shaugnessy (up) left the nude lug.

Channel-surfing fridge magnet, madly surging flannel big rig.
Put Chris Hoppes in your pipe and smoke it, popish vagrant.

Na na na na, na na na na, hey hey hey, goodbye.

Supersuckers

Last night I caught the Supersuckers at the WOW Hall. A good show, rawk-n-roll all the way. Cowboy hats, sweat, snotty attitude, confused teenagers, confused middle-aged hippies, and so forth. Highlight: the cover of "Hey Ya" at the end. I saw a couple of rock purist fucks walk out when they busted into it, but most folks stayed on and grooved. Hannah called me a "fuckin' pussy" or something along those lines because I had to sit down half-way through the show. I can't help it--I'm old. My feet hurt, I was drunk. Besides, I'm saving my rock and roll energy for the Pixies.

Before the show, we met at the Dive Bar & Grill for food and drink. I had a pint of ESB and a Scotch on the rocks. I also ate something called a Texas Cheesesteak, which would have been good, I think, if not for the crumble-crumble fall away bread. I ended up with a mess. The potato salad was pretty good, though--tangy, not too sweet, uneven texture, which I like. Hannah's Goat Cheese Plate became a Goat Cheese salad, which caused much confusion. Finally, though, the goat cheese was eaten with little bits of sun-dried tomato and cute garlic crouton-things. Damn. I'm getting hungry.

Ramen

I buy my beer at a local convenience store called Little's Market. Little's has a surprisingly good and varied selection of beer, soft drinks, wine, ice cream, and ramen. The ramen isn't any fake American stuff, either. In fact, it's so un-American that it's nearly impossible to tell what you're buying. At any one time, the shelves are stocked with at least a dozen varieties of very colorful ramen, priced at 89 cents, all in Korean.

I always buy a package, usually after several beers, take it home, cook it, and then forget about it. Occasionally, though, I'll find a REALLY GOOD ramen, but since I don't read Korean, I have a hard time remembering which is which. I've come up with a solution. I plan on buying two packs of ramen every few days, photographing each package, and then recording the tasting results immediately after. I'll post the findings here. I've got a green package and a red package in my cupboard. Watch this space for a detailed analysis.

More dinner: Nick Twemlow and Josh Edwards

I've had many meals with these guys. For the longest time, the three of us (and sometimes Nick's lovely wife, Robyn) would convene to eat, drink whiskey, and talk poetry at a local Asian/Italian joint called Lucky Noodle. Josh always seemed to have trouble deciding what to eat, and then, finally, one night he looked up from his menu and said, "I don't like noodles."

Maybe you had to be there.

The last time I ate with Josh and Nick was at an Indian restaurant called Priya. We were happily discussing Lyn Hejinian, Arielle Greenberg, and Anthony Hecht (one of these things is not like the other....) when a woman at the next table leaned over and shouted at us, "Who are you?" Turns out she was a new hire in the English Dept. at UO. The food was very good. Afterward we edited Canary for many hours.

My manuscript, 'lucky error," contains a poem in which Josh and Nick eat dinner. It's called "Kansas."

Valentine Haiku

If I believed love
was as important as lunch
I’d be much thinner.

Pixies Reunion

The Pixies are playing here in Eugene at the MacDonald Theater on April 27, 2004.
I thought I'd never see the day.

Anyone every notice how in "Gouge Away" the verses are where the chorus is supposed to be, and the "quiet" "verse" sections are actually the chorus?

Dinner w/Belz

I had dinner at a Welsh pub in St. Louis last Dec. 13th. The joint was called Llewellyn's, and my host was the affable, fashionable, witty Aaron Belz.

I had the flank steak, medium rare, topped with (or was it on top of?) a generous portion of Welsh Rarebit/Rabbit. Bloody meat, soggy bread, and alcoholicky, slightly bitter, cheese sauce. Mmm. Belz had the chips (an odd cross between a "Saratoga" style chip, and a more traditional "french-fry" chip). Belz was watching his figure. I was not, as I am obese. We each had a couple of pints of Fuller's ESB. Or maybe it was porter.

Then, there was a reading, w/me, Arielle Greenberg, and Shane Seely. They didn't eat, Arielle and Shane. They don't need food. Afterward, I went down a big slide, and had beers with Stefene Russell (star of the acclaimed "Plan 10 From Outer Space") and her husband, Thom. Thom took a photo of Belz and I. Then I sat in a cold hotel room and ate bad delivery pizza. I had HBO, though, which made me pretty darn happy.

Kent Johnson and I are planning on eating fish tacos soon.

Poets, Food, MM-hm.

This just in from poet and critic Sara McCurry:

My recipe for "Hicksville White Girl Tacos":

1 lb. pork, cubed into around 1 inch cubes
1 can tomatoes w/green chiles
2-3 garlic cloves, minced or pressed (you gotta have a
garlic press, right?)
1 tbsp. chili powder, pref. your own grind (one can
skimp the tomatoes, but never the chili powder)
Some thyme and some cumin, some cayenne too.
1 tbsp cocoa powder (stay with me--it's like white
trash mole!)
1/2 of whatever beer you're currently drinking

Brown the pork. Dump in tomatoes & everything else &
simmer on low until the pork is very tender (add beer
or broth as needed--takes an hour 1/2 or two) and the
whole mess looks like it won't run to your elbow if
you fill a flour tortilla with it. Fill a flour
tortilla with it, and whatever condiments you find
conducive. The cocoa powder gives a great richness and
you'd never know it was in there. Prepare to clear
whole rooms with your gaseous expressions of
contentment about 4 1/2 hours later.

Music

Listening to: The Supersuckers, "Motherfuckers Be Trippin'"

I think this album includes non-subliminal messages about taking drugs and having sex.

Thanks, Hannah!

Fat

According to the instruction manual that came with my new guaranteed-for-life lithium-battery-powered electronic bathroom scale, my body-mass index is in the "obese" range.

Awesome.

Bad Food

In the past week, I've eaten at Carl's Jr. three times. I think parts are going to start falling off soon. I've already begun to walk a little funny, more slowly. There's a faint ringing in my ears.

The local CJ's is interesting--the main dining area is a huge sunken room with several largish television sets tuned to local sporting events. There's also a balcony and a mezzanine level. Nobody sits there. Down in the sunken den, though, you can always observe several groups of people, usually in dirty pants and/or ballcaps, eating Double Western Bacon Cheeseburgers and watching college basketball, or whatever happens to be the current sport. I've been enjoying this. The people-watching aspect of Carl's Jr. can be mildly, briefly, fascinating . Why three times in one week? God knows.

Eating with Poets

I've eaten, I guess, with a lot of poets.

My friend Janice Pang, a fine poet, used to have folks up to her spectacular rich-person house above the golf course for elaborate lamb roasts and the like. I always felt out-of-place, under-educated, under-traveled, and under-sophisticated at these parties, but the foood was something else.

On my first date with my ex-ex-girlfriend (a poet) we ate at a faux-cajun-trailer park sort of place. A dive, but an elegant, trashy dive. I don't remember what I ate. We had several glasses of wine.

I used to cook for her a lot--though she wasn't often appreciative. I'd spend three hours in the kitchen making some extra-special meal and then carrying it precariously on my bicycle to her house, and she'd report that someone else (insert name of friend here) had just dropped by with some store-bought soup that she ate and now she's full and isn't my friend sweet for bringing me food and oh! you brought food. Honey, I've got to (rest, grade papers, insert excuse here).

More recently I've eaten dinner with the following poets: Aaron Belz, Nick Twemlow, Robyn Schiff, Joshua Edwards. More on these meals soon.

New Arrivals

Blankets an illustrated novel by Craig Thompson

Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazan

Those Shakespeare close readings will have to wait...

Postmodern Generator

Valentine

Jim Behrle is posting candy hearts over at his blog. I'm thinking about Valentine's day. I don't usually think much of holidays (except when they mean a day off) but yesterday the young woman who makes my coffee asked me if I had any Valentine's day plans. On one hand, I think she was just making small talk, but what better way to determine whether someone is single, no? I told her if I could find a date in the next ten days I'd be going out. She laughed.

A couple weeks ago, one of my students, during office hours, made a passing comment including something like the following phrase: "well, obviously you don't have a family." Is it obvious? This means two things: 1) I'm at the age where I'm now expected to have a family 2) I'm aberrant because I don't, which means that I must be unlovable, uncohabitable with, or just a loser.

Last Valentine's day I went bowling with two friends of mine (a couple). I smoked 'em. I'm a decent rise-to-the-occasion bowler. It must be the 7th grade junior bowling league in me.

If you have Valentine's recipes, send 'em my way. Or dinner stories, or anything else.

The Quesadilla

Sometime in the late 80s or early 90s, the quesadilla began showing up on restaurant menus all over America. It was a very different thing than the quesadilla I grew up eating. For one thing, it was big--usually two oversized flour tortillas, sandwiching gooey cheese with additions: chicken, other meat product, herbs, chiles, or whatever the clever chef had on hand.

This is generally a very tasty snack, and I confess to making a version myself from time to time (though I usually go meatless--I can't imagine cooking a piece of chicken or steak to simply use it in a quesadilla. It just doesn't seem appropriate. This is akin, I suppose, to my reluctance to order pasta as a meal at a restaurant. Pasta is a first course to me, or a side dish--how can one be satisfied with only a bowl of pasta?). However, the quesadilla my mother used to make (neither of us makes it now) consisted of a corn tortilla (almost always store-bought) folded around some softish cheese (usually Jack, unless someone had been to Mexico lately and brought back some Mexican melting cheese) and fried in oil. Before the average American knew what a quesadilla was, I'd eat these things all the time. My friend Tom, unable or unwilling to say "quesadilla" called my favorite snack "greasy cheese." Which it was. Very delicious greasy cheese. This quesadilla has completely disappeared from my repertoire. My recently (last ten years or so) health-conscious mother denies ever making it at all.

I managed to write four pages of the prospectus yesterday--quite a feat. Today, I'm faced with a stack of 30-odd close readings of Shakespeare's sonnet 84, which I'm sure will keep me busy this weekend, along with a stack of midterms.

In the meantime, I'm expecting my copy of Marcella's Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking to show up on my stoop any day now. Homemade tagliatelle with Bolognese sauce.

Huh?!?

Unidentified American Idol contestant, last night:

"These lights are blinding my train of thought for the focus of song right now."

Actually, that doesn't sound too bad...

Poem

An old poem. I almost got booed out of a workshop for this one.
I'm still not sure why


BREAKFAST NOTES

Talk over breakfast, the Women
of Color Conference and tall water,
ice, paper napkins—my father
is French, so I shall have the omelette.
My color is peach! she beamed, (yes God)
and out the window, we began an apprenticeship
to the stars, not yet sequined on the sky.

Sexual decisions are seldom sexual,
but economic because a seminar costs X
dollars, and this is why we go: toast
and potatoes with cheese, coffee, jam—
costs four-twenty and I leave a tip
of raucous silvery change. How long
can I continue in these funny papers,
late as I am to each day’s happy unfolding?

So hard to be wholesome while wearing
blue shoes stitched with dragonflies—
a waiter buzzes by, the coffee needs
arranging. Peppering her eggs, the blue
falls. A boy. Which becomes. And the gym
coach punched me “for my health”—then settled
back as snow to earth, a nest for those we haven’t held.

On the bedroom floor, a box of books,
a pile of papers, flow charts: the tumbling
which. Mariachi music drifts in, the closet
full of undershirts. Can you tell me
the Korean word for fish? O, is this Texas?
Has your hair always been red? Muy bien,
how gold! Do you fly each morning past
my house, hoping I will rise to the window and hear?

Thanksgiving Poem

Geoffrey Gatza sends along this link to his Thanksgiving project.

Baylesses on Chile/Chili

Rick Bayless, semi-celebrity chef and self-appointed Mexican cooking authority, has a program on PBS in which he and, sometimes, his daughter, cook "classic" Mexican dishes. The schtick is this: he goes to Mexico, researches a recipe and tastes it in several local incarnations, and then develops a sort of "mainline" recipe that is meant to approximate as closely as possible what the average Mexican would consider an "authentic" version of that dish.

Today's episode, serendipitously enough, focused on red chile, or chile colorado! The two versions he made, though, were both that extreme variations on the classic recipe he includes in his cookbooks.

Rick made his with dark toasted chile puree thinned with a bit of broth and roasted garlic. He added this sauce to browned lamb shoulder and simmered with some epazote (his daughter turned up her nose at this addition) and sliced mushrooms.

Lanie (Rick's daughter) used ground beef (not uncommon in the household of my youth), fresh garlic, and (this is the kicker) added tomatoes AND pinto beans, for a more American-style chili. Note the spelling change: when you add beans and tomatoes, I think, it goes from being "chile" to "chili."

100,000

Today I was both visitor number 99,999 and 100,001 to Silliman's blog.
Wow. I wonder who was between me. Someone got a free book.

Whoever it is, you should ask for a copy of Billy Collins' latest instead of Ron's.

Complicating the Burrito (with some notes on the Taco)

When I was young, we used to eat tortillas fresh off the comal (big flat cast-iron griddle used for cooking tortillas), smeared with lots of butter. This was the most common use of the soft,white, floppy bread.

The "burrito" was an item I'd heard of, but never ate at home. Flour tortillas were almost always an accompaniment to some other dish--not a "wrap." Occasionally, however, one might roll up some refried beans and/or some red chile in a tortilla, more-or-less "burrito style." This was (and is) called a "taco." However, if Mom or Gramma says "We're having tacos for dinner," she means the crispy fried kind.

The burrito stuffed with rice and vegetables and beans and meat (what Rosengarten calls a "San Franciso Style" burrito) seems to me a relatively recent innovation, and one that robs the burrito of some integrity, I think. When I lived in San Diego, I learned to eat burritos on a regular basis, but most taco stands conceived of a burrito as a showcase for a certain filling (usually a single type of meat, or a mixture such as "machaca"--meat and eggs (though this is confusing because "machaca" means something else in Mexico), or chorizo with potatoes, wrapped in a soft flour tortilla, with little else. Beans and rice were served optionally, and always on the side. I was a devoted carne asada fan. At Adalberto's on Rosecrantz (directly across the street from the now-defunct Naval Training Center, where as a youth I was employed), circa 1991, a carne asada burrito consisted of about a half pound of meat, topped with guacamole and a bit of cheese. It sold for $2.60, including tax. Pure heaven. I went back to Adalberto's in September 2001 and the burritos were exactly the same, albeit a bit more expensive ($3.40). I always had mine without the guac, however. I've never been able to stomach the avocado or its kin.

Here in Eugene, every burrito shop offers the "San Francisco" style burrito exclusively. I don't eat many burritos for this reason.

Feedback & The Mexican Eggroll

This just in from Julia Beckner-Covert, a good friend, avid fan of food, and G.M. Hopkins-basher.

Antonio,

I really enjoyed your blog. What does blog stand for? I love your traditional stance regarding fish tacos, they have gone through the americanization process that many foods go through, a marketing ploy which entails adding cheese and another dairy product, namely sour cream.

My biggest food complaint is when places like Chiles and their ilk (TGI Fridays, Red Robin, Appleby's, all that shit) make these appetizers that are like "Mexican Eggrolls" or whatever. I hate those places. Doesn't that sound disgusting? Mexican Eggrolls?

Well, Julia, actually--though I oppose Chilis and their ilk, I'm a fan of "fusion" food as long as it's cheap and unpretentious. I have no problem with the idea of a "Mexican Eggroll"--of course, I probably won't ever eat one because I won't ever be caught in Chilis. That said, this weekend, my Mom brought me a platter of "egg rolls" that she had concocted by mixing Jimmy Dean sausage (a favorite of Vanilla Ice--for those of you who have been catching "The Surreal Life") and packaged "coleslaw mix"--sausage, cabbage & carrots, and some fresh ginger. Deep-fried to greasy goodness. Actually, they weren't too impressive, but my mother has never been the most impressive cook. I wasn't hand-rolling pasta at age 12 because I loved my mom's cooking.

Anyway, I ate the eggrolls. I had to gussy up the rather sickly sweet plum sauce she provided with a little Lee Kum Kee chili-garlic sauce--an indispensable condiment for any refrigerator.

Crispy Tacos and the Politics of Cultural Identity

Rosengarten writes in his big book, something like: in Mexico, a taco is a soft tortilla wrapped around meat. In the U.S., however, the word "taco" brings to mind a crisp-fried half moon, etc.

I would add, filled with iceberg lettuce, tomatoes, ground beef, and yellow cheese.
And there's nothing wrong with that.

As a kid, I always thought that we (my family and I) ate Mexican food. We, were, after all, "Mexicans" right? "Mexican" was an ethnic and cultural category that had little to do with where one was born or what country one was a citizen of, but with who one's parents were, and what language they spoke, and whether or not someone in the immediate family made fresh tortillas everyday, and whether your beans came from a can or not. Mexican identity was also inextricably bound with "Catholic"--so even now, some 20 years after rejecting Roman Catholicism, and discovering in its place, oddly, Marcella Hazan and Classic Italian Cooking, my mother still refers to me as a Catholic and a Mexican, no matter that I'm an agnostic American with two American parents. And I can barely speak Spanish.

So what do Anglophone Catholic Mexicans living in small Pacific Northwest logging towns eat?

Tacos. The crispy-fried kind. It's only recently that I've come to realize that what I grew up eating was not Mexican food, per se, but Tex-Mex, or border food. Gooey cheese and green onion enchiladas, chile colorado, chiles rellenos (anaheims--from a can!--stuffed with jack cheese and covered in egg batter), crispy fried half-moon tacos, tostadas, quesadillas, fresh flour tortillas every day, fresh refried beans, sopa seca de fideos, and very occasionally, red rice. On holidays and special occasions, Gramma would whip up a batch of fresh corn tortillas, but only rarely, and only under duress.

I never ate a burrito until my first visit to Taco Bell, and then, later, at multiple street corners in San Diego.

This Just In

A cooking tip from Dr. Johnson:


If preparing Squirrel Head Cheese Surprise as an appetizer, it is best to do so in the spring, for it is in this season that these fine creatures are most delectable inside, energized and plumped as they are by the nuts they have saved all winter. For a party of four, sixteen heads will do. Sever the heads, wash them with soap to remove all parasites in the fur, and pull the skin down around the cavity at the base, sewing as you would a hen for roasting. Now drop them into a pot of boiling water for up to six hours and go about your chores, perhaps taking the time to prepare other things for the gathering, or even to make a centerpiece of wildflowers, if they are handy. After this boiling time (don't forget to set the timer!) the skin and flesh should peel off easily down to the skull. Simply pull off, sutures and all, making sure the cavity is positioned upward, lest the cheeses fall out. Now take an empty egg carton and place the skulls (they should be white as fresh eggs! ) cavity-side up. Stuff each cavity with a wad of fresh bacon. Now place the skulls in a baking dish (a tin foil bottom is a good idea, as it saves quite a bit of clean-up time) and bake, uncovered, at 375 degrees for two hours. Remove and put four skulls on each plate, garnishing with parsely or other herb. Instruct the guests (this, incidentally, is a fine dish to serve when having experimental-type poets over to dinner, especially those from New York or Philadelphia, unaccustomed as they are to Midwestern fare!) in how to use the nutcrackers. Simply say, in a casual voice, "You just crack it open like a walnut." Then, after doing this yourself, show them how to directly suck out the cheeses from the fissure created by the nutcracker. You may say, before doing so: "Imagine that this is the brain of Billy Collins." Then, having sucked, take a swallow from your drink (a dry white is best with this appetizer) and watch your guests do it, putting special attention on the poet whom you sexually desire. If he or she is awkward (this is likely) on the first try, quickly say "Oh, dear!" and get up, take his or her napkin, and dab the cheeses away from the chin. Then, taking a second skull, crack it for him or her, and raise the fissure to the mouth of the object of your desire (hopefully he or she will not just be sexy, but also have connections that will lead to a publication for you!) and beg him or her to suck. Whisper this word "suck," while closing your eyes and pressing your buttocks tightly together with all of your might. If the weather is agreeable, make sure the windows are open, for the sake of the breeze and for the songbirds. Use the bacon to mop up any cheeses spilled onto the plate.

Enjoy! You will be a hit!

Links and Such

As soon as I figure out how to add links and stuff, I will.

And one of these days, photos.

My Dinner With Aaron Belz

A bit of a teaser, as I don't plan on writing about dinner with Aaron Belz at the moment, but I am requesting that people send me short anecdotes or long stories about dinners they've had with poets and other creative people. I'm also accepting recipes, food poems, and various other food-related material. I'll post as much of it as I can right here.

Close Reading How-To Tip (for concerned Eng 221 students)

Question: How do I start my close reading?
Answer: Identify the "problem" or question your thesis will attempt to answer.

Example:

"Robinson's 275th sonnet, part of the Tangerine Sequence, asserts the sinful nature of citrus fruit and the complications this causes for the greengrocer. In the 240 preceding sonnets, the speaker has consistently praised all fruit--particularly citrus--as paragons of botanical virtue and beauty. However, in 275, remarkably, the speaker condemns all citrus for its 'stinkinge oyle' and 'bitter odoriferous rinde,' and pleads with the greengrocer to 'banish these false seed-containing globes' from the market."

In The Lab

Time: 10:30ish a.m.

Sitting in UO English Dept. computer lab, in an attempt to place as much distance between myself and the students clamoring at my office door, two floors down.

Larissa, fellow grad student and good person, turns to me from an adjacent computer and says: "I read your blog. You're weird. You're a weird guy."

Okay. Ego boosted.

Oregon

I've never really thought much about it, but Oregon has strange alcohol laws. You can't buy beer or wine in a liquor store, nor can you buy liquor in a store that carries beer and wine. If you need a forty of malt liquor, you got to the Circle K and buy it from Andy. If you need a fifth of Old Crow, you have to go to the liquor store, which is only open for 8 hours a day. It's not open on Sunday.

Parties in the USA

Jeff Tweedy has a book of poetry out. It's been mentioned on other blogs, but I figured I'd weigh in. I can't bear to look at the samples posted on the publisher's website. Did anyone read Paul McCartney's book?

[Shudder]

Right now I'm listening to Jonathan Richman singing about parties. I don't go to enough parties.
Invite me to your party. I can make good daiquiris.

Almost Donne

Teaching "Holy Sonnet #9" and "Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" tomorrow. I know I won't have enough time--it's always a problem. I teach two discussion sections of the same large lecture class once a week. This amounts to seeing each of my students for 50 minutes each week. There are always office hours, of course, but students only like to visit office hours that aren't regularly scheduled.

How is John Donne like Al Green?

More on Fish Tacos & Chile Colorado

Calvin Trillin claims, in an article he wrote for Gourmet, which I can't find at the moment, that the best fish tacos he had were in Ensenada and Los Angeles, respectively. He was underwhelmed by the San Diego version. I can vouch for the goodness of the Ensenada taco, but LA....hmm.

There was a really excellent fish taco article in Saveur a couple years back.

Finally, last night, on "Food Nation," the startlingly Michael Rapaport-like Bobby Flay was somewhere in Texas, where a local chef cooked him an upscale version of Chile Colorado--instead of chunks of beef or pork simmered in the sauce, he made the sauce separately and then dressed filet mignons with it. He used no tomatoes.

Tyler Florence is a tool.

Poem

BOXCAR WAITING

This expanse of vast your mouth
This influx of Faust your thrush

Apprehend more crystal with a broken lance
Take a stance approximately undershirt

Painted china broken up your rain
Stormy fancier place a velvet packet hence

This potted plant of saffron in your dirt
This half-rung bell in toto up the main

Pants a bottle with a favorite song
Play it softly Sam here comes your man

A flag that flies sincerely parody with Kristin
This American pandowdy leaks: undoing of a button

Food Poems

Kent Johnson has suggested that I post food poems by poets who like food on this blog.
I will do that.

Here's a link to one of my own Kent Johnson-inspired food poems.

Here's a food poem by Kent Johnson himself:

Dinner with Some Folks

--for Dr. Samuel Johnson

I was having dinner with Francis Picabia, Kurt Schwitters, and the Count of Lautreamont. Some other minor poets of the pre-war years were there. Lautreamont was dead, of course, and his boiled body was being served in thin slices stuffed into dainty baguettes the shape of the pods of milkweed. Everything was going famously, Picabia was making Vvvvv sounds, holding the severed wheel of his crashed Belogna; Ball was flapping his papier-mache wings at top velocity; and Man Ray's three girlfriends, with their pointed, penitent hoods, were drinking absinthe and whispering mysteriously near the lime tree. Then it happened that Breton gave his ten year old, bowl-cutted son, Aragon, a slice of the Count's perfectly shaped derriere. "Eat," commanded Breton. The child dutifully swallowed and at once commenced to gag and retch, his little hands going to his throat, like the hands of a shot head of state, and he turned violet throughout the whole area of his body. No equanimity here! Nadja began to scream, the chained monkey madly pulled at his sex, and Breton launched into shouts, though not words, but primal, paratactic reports. The sounds coming from the child were those of crows, or something else I cannot yet name. In this moment of crisis, I didn't choke, nosiree, I did not: I sprinted over, wrapped my arms around his waist, thrust my pelvis into his backside, and performed the miraculous maneuver I had brought with me from the future-- the Heimlich, as it is known, squeezing and lifting the little brat's rib cage with all my might in five rapid successions. It worked... For there on the parquet floor, ejected at thirty paces and writhing, covered in a film of slime, was a baby shark. "How on earth did that get into him?" cried Lacan. "I don't know, but I could give a shit," said some South American poet, "So pass the fucking butter."

David Rosengarten: Sinner

I mentioned yesterday that I'd been reading David Rosengarten's attempt at the definitive American cookbook, called It's All American Food.

I've got to admit, I've always regarded Rosengarten suspiciously. He wrote the Dean & Deluca cookbook, which makes him suspect for a number of reasons, and he often sends out mass-mailings to wannabe foodies like myself, inviting us to join his secret newsletter club. I haven't joined the club, but I have read his new cookbook.

Overall, it's not a bad read, with some pretty interesting recipes. He covers "american-style" ethic foods for the first half of the book. What this means is instead of doing a Marcella Hazan version of Italian food, he offers recipes for Spaghetti and Meatballs, Chicken Cacciatore, that sort of thing. Similarly, the Chinese section contains shitty Chinese restaurant staples such as General Tso's Chicken, Sweet and Sour Pork, and so forth. So far so good.

And then. And then. The regional cuisine section. Rosengarten's introduction is a bit odd. He wastes a lot of pages arguing (kind of) that America has no true regional cuisine. And then he proceeds to name and provide recipes for each American region. Except for the Pacific Northwest. Leaves out Washington and Oregon completely, though come to think of it, we don't really have any regional specialties up here. No lobster roll, no Philly Cheeseteak, no special style of pizza, no indigenous fish taco.

Speaking of the Fish Taco, here's where he really fucks up. As a former San Diegan and fish taco devotee, I feel qualified to assert that David Rosengarten's recipe for "San Diego Fish Tacos" is utter bullshit. Maybe it tastes good. That's not the point. It's a fiction. I've never eaten a fish taco in San Diego that bore any resemblance to the gussied up "healthy" version he offers here.

Where he's right: He recommends using filets of firm-fleshed white fish. Okay.

That's about all he gets right. He recommends grilling the fish, after having rubbed it in a rather byzantine spice mixture. He calls for sour cream. He calls for CHEESE. Cheese on a fish taco? You've got to be kidding me!

The true fish taco consists of two soft, steamy, preferably freshly made corn tortillas, onto which you place two fingers of fried fish (beer battered, with little or no seasoning or marinade--add a little lime juice to the fish before battering if you'd like), shredded white cabbage, and a thin sauce of mayonnaise mixed with a little milk. A little lime juice is also often added to this sauce, but it's not necessary or traditional. Why? Because you should always have fresh limes on hand to squeeze on the taco as you eat it. That's it. Usually fish tacos are served with a choice of at least two salsas, one red, one green.

There is no Monterey Jack on a fish taco. The fish must be fried in beer batter until crunchy. There is no dairy on a fish taco save the bit of milk you use to thin the mayonnaise.

Oh oh oh! I just re-read the introduction the recipe. Rosengarten acknowledges that the fish taco is usually fried, but recommends grilling in order to "make it as Californian as possible." What the hell does that mean?

Bad Movies, Failed Dickel Attempt, How Not To Do Beef Jerky

I didn't make it around to drinking George Dickel or eating Dad's adulterated red chile last night. My brother showed up late, while I was deeply engrossed in what may be one of the worst films I've seen in a long time, American Psycho II starring That Seventies Show's Mila Kunis and William Shatner. I don't know how it ended though, because I lost interest after Kunis defenestrated Captain Kirk. I'm serious. So me and my bro sat around eating Dad's beef jerky. He overdried and oversmoked this batch. He also didn't trim it very well, leaving unattractive streaks of Crisco-like fat in the jerky. I didn't drink the whiskey. It was too late. Today I'm trying to prepare a lesson on John Donne.