Weekend Reading – The Hungry Ear and More

A Good Read:

The Hungry Ear
Poems of Food & Drink
Edited by Kevin Young

Unknown

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Shell Game

They call it a shell game
But my Uncle Jack told me it was called Thimblerig.

Take out three shells and a pea – an old soldier’s trick.
It’s depicted as a gamble, but really, when the wager’s for money, it’s a confidence trick
used to perpetrate fraud.

flickr.com/photos/anchovypizza/ CC2.0

flickr.com/photos/anchovypizza/ CC2.0

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Poetry at the Farmers’ Market

“A poem is the record of a discovery, either the discovery of something in the world, or within one’s self, or perhaps the discovery of something through the juxtaposition of sounds and sense within our language. Our job as poets is to set down the record of those discoveries in such a way that our readers will make the discoveries theirs and will delight in them.” – Former Poet Laureate Ted Kooser

Farmers’ Market

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Dinner and a Poem

Beans and Rice

Beans and Rice

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Tammy’s Top Ten (t3 report) Ways to Celebrate Poetry

A couple of weeks ago, I was invited to a food and wine pairing meal. It was an exquisitely prepared 5 or 6 courses each with a special tasting of wine to accompany. As we head into April, I’d like to acknowledge another type of pairing – that of food and poetry.

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Cortney Davis, the poetry editor of “Alimentum: The Literature of Food,” also acknowledges this pairing.

The best foods are layered–we notice the hint of rosemary behind the muscular taste of tomato or the suggestion of oak that appears moments after the swallow of a fine wine. . . . Some foods taste better left-over–the second-day helping of turkey and stuffing at Thanksgiving. Poems must be multi-layered too, and they must last not only through the second serving, but through many readings, offering us . . . another revelation, another way of looking at ourselves. . . .

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Oniondated!

The task of the poet is often to create the extraordinary from something household and mundane. Perhaps this is the reason the onion has been the focus of so many poems. Pablo Neruda wrote them as crystalline orbs holding magic within their layers. But today the final stanza of a Margaret Clark poem most appeals to me:

Onions
cannot help being metaphors; they would rather stay
mysteries in the moist soil. They would rather I unwrap
myself. If I could, I tell them through the blur, I would.

Worthy of Poetry?

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Honoring Okra and the Summer Games

Who knew? I was on my way to the office listening to an update about last night’s games when this story from National Public Radio struck me from across the airwaves. Apparently, from the dawn of the Olympic games until 1948, poetry was included as part of the competition.

Olympic Stamp 1960 Greece

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Preparing with a Poem in my Pocket

The idea is simple. Find a poem that you love or one that makes you laugh or something that conjures up wistful memories. Write it down. Put it in your pocket and throughout the day, share it with your friends and your coworkers and the people in line at the coffee shop and the students in your class and your family at the dinner table and whoever else you come into contact with. It’s National Poetry Month. Read poetry.

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Getting Back on the Turnip Truck

I have no idea where the phrase, “didn’t just fall off the turnip turnip truck” originates. In fact, if you talk with my 93 year old grandmother, she’ll tell you that the milk truck was actually more hazardous. Evan Morris believes it is an example of a catch phrase based upon urban-rural rivalry.

3 lb Turnip in my CSA (egg for scale)

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Cracking the Cultural Nut

A colleague recently told me, “I’m not nearly as good as you are at getting my kids out to cultural events.” I knew instantly that my own kids might prefer to live in her house. You see, I love arts and humanities and I have this twisted parental attitude that developed years ago while reading What to Expect When You’re Expecting that says, exposure to said events will result in increased synapse firing for developing brains. In other words, what I love must be good for them!

flickr.com/photos/peasap/photostream/

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